


Nothing But The Rain

by skyline



Category: South Park
Genre: Biological Warfare, Forced Prostitution, M/M, So much angst, Terrorism, Vampirism, sexy times I guess, zombie apocalypse kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-15
Updated: 2009-11-12
Packaged: 2018-05-02 04:24:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 22,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5233949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyline/pseuds/skyline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I had this best friend once. This super best friend. He warned me that this would happen. He told me that eventually whoever came into power within our tiny quarantine would declare Marshall Law. He told me it would be hard to tell the angels from the demons.</p><p>I hate him, that once best friend of mine. To the core of my being, I hate him.</p><p>(Or, Kyle's a freedom fighter. Stan's a lawyer with a gun. Kenny's a biological weapon. They're all miserable.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. When the First Star You See May Not be a Star

_-Kyle-_

* * *

The alleyway is cold, hard. Dark. The perfect place for midnight liaisons.

The only warmth comes from the embers of his cigarette and his blazing, disdainful gaze.

“Stop staring at me like that,” I tell him, and he doesn’t blink.

“Like what?”

“Like you could burn a hole through me if you tried,” I snap. Doing this kind of thing always make me testy.

He smiles then, the slightest quirk of his lips that most people would mistake as a grimace.

“You are always like zis.”

“You act like that’s a bad thing,” I counter, snatching the cigarette away to take a drag. Then I blow smoke in his face. It doesn’t faze him, of course. But I’m immature, and it gives me pleasure all the same.

Christophe’s face is like stone, unchanging. He deftly secures his cigarette from my bumbling fingers, “Oui, sometimes.”

The moon breaks from the clouds, but only for a moment. It’s only ever for a moment. A single ray of light is enough, though, and both of our heads turn towards the end of the alley so quickly I’m surprised we don’t have whiplash.

No one sees us. No one ever does.

“When are we going to do zis?” he asks, his eyes dark and swimming. He’s taller than me, which is rare. I’m not used to looking up when I speak to someone.

My little brother says it’s good for me not to be looking down every once in a while. He hopes it will deflate my ego.

No such luck so far. I, like Christophe, have never seen arrogance as a bad thing. Maybe that will be my downfall someday.

Someday is a long time away. I’m okay waiting.

“Tomorrow,” I resolve, “Around noon.”

“Why noon? It eez a cliché,” Christophe sneers, his face hidden by a cloud of carcinogens.

“Would you prefer an odd number? Twelve thirteen?”

He doesn’t catch my sarcasm. He barely ever does. Or maybe he just steamrolls right over it, every single time. It wouldn’t surprise me. Very little surprises me anymore.

“I would,” he agrees.

“Fine. Twelve thirteen.”

Like those thirteen minutes will make even the slightest difference. It’s going to happen, even if I have to do it all alone, by sheer force of will.

I won't be alone. Christophe’s good at his job. He won’t fail. He never does. That’s why they’re scared of him. That’s why we have to hide.

I could be killed just for being seen with him.

Somehow, dying has stopped mattering. It shouldn’t, but hey, I do a lot of things I shouldn’t.

Meanwhile my body is breaking down, slowly but surely. I can’t stand it. This ageing thing. This dying thing. I’m dying where I stand, sometimes.

I bid Christophe goodbye, striding out of the alleyway like I had every right to be there. I stagger and weave, like I’m drunk, attracting attention. People don’t question drunks.

Out on the street, the first thing I see is him. They set up the shop with the glass window where Tom’s Rhinoplasty used to be. He’s on display there, like some filthy magazine cover.

I stand outside the window with all the other perverts and stare, openly. I can do that now, when it’s easy to hide.

He can’t see us, of course. We stand in the darkness, away from the pools of light cast by the street lamps. It wouldn’t do to be seen, staring at him in his own house. But he knows we’re there. He looks out from time to time, trying to discern who lingers in the shadows cast by the other buildings on Main Street.

Shame makes him beautiful.

I saw him once, in the grocery store. He stood there, the fluorescent lights reflecting a halo onto his blond hair. With my eyes, I traced the blue of his veins beneath his skin.

Of course, three years ago seeing Kenny wouldn’t have been such a rare thing.

He’s got immunity to the virus, or so they say.

I step deeper into the shadows.

He’s bathed in light. He always is. He still has that halo, even though he’s standing there under the watchful eyes of all the things in the night that want to molest him, to hurt him, to try to make him lose his soul.

Sometimes you lose your soul and you just keep on walking, so that’s what I do. I turn around. I leave his light.

I have a mission to do.


	2. I Wanna Unbutton Your Pants Just A Lil Bit

_-Kenny-_

* * *

Dead leaves crunch underneath my boots.

They used to be pretty; shades of red, orange, and yellow. Now they’re just brown. Like shit. Like rot. The teeth of winter are about to bite down hard, turning South Park into a barren wasteland.

I make my way home, although calling it a home is making a mockery of warmth filled houses everywhere. The place I live, it isn’t home. It’s a fucking office, for Chris’sake. Hollowed out inside so they can show me off like a prostitute in Amsterdam.

I always wanted to go to Amsterdam. Get high, do a few regrettable things.

I guess I’m no better than those whores I always wanted to visit. In fact, I’m probably worse off. They chose their profession. I got pushed into it. All because of this disease, this thing that eats at people from the inside out, decays their minds and their hearts until they’re no better than those flesh eating zombies I used to laugh at on TV.

When the plague first hit, it hit hard. A thousand people gone, in a week. Almost fifty percent of our entire damned town.

Half the infected died, and the other half turned into the things that go bump in the night. We were overwrought.

The government obviously had its fill of Resident Evil movies. They quarantined Park County with a wall so high it’s hard to see the sun over it. They left us a few marines at first, but those were quickly taken by the infection.

We thought they were working on a cure. When none was forthcoming, it became official. Those of us that lived were on our own.

It wasn’t so bad at first. My mom and my brother got taken in the first bout of the disease, but I still had my dad. I was okay. We were both immune.

I stumble over something. A hole, a ditch. Whatever.

Sometimes I think the moon is just a big hole in the sky.

Funny thing about holes. They show up places you’d never expect. In your life, your heart.

In your dad’s head.

It came to pass that the infected got herded up; taken to the big ol’ factory down at my end of town. Naturally, we all had to be cleared out.

Who decided this?

Well, wouldn’t you know it? Those damned vampire kids back in fourth grade? Turns out they were a bit more vampiric than we thought.

Some of them, that is.

Or maybe they just had the natural, inherent leadership abilities that the rest of us lacked. Either way, it was that clique, that little posse of losers who took hold of the reins of my town. Declared themselves the supreme rulers, and all that.

People were so damned tired of dying that they couldn’t fight back. Wouldn’t fight back. Hell, who would want to fight back against a group of boys and girls with fucking glitter on their cheeks and natural charisma? Didn’t seem too bad; getting told what to do by a lot of posers. They’re the only ones that had any control over the beasts that people were becoming anyway. Shoved ‘em in the factory, and fed ‘em three square meals a day.

Don’t ask me where they get the chopped up human bits and pieces. I’m not privy to that.

So one day I come home from what passed as school in those days and find them in my living room. Daddy’s got a bullet in his head, and I’ve got options. Oh yeah, _options_.

They killed everyone in the ghetto. Needed the room, needed the spare fucking parts. By virtue of the fact that I was the only they knew in school, they spared me. Said I could help the new institution.

They stole my dignity.

I only had a shred to begin with, but I was ready to fight tooth and nail to keep it.         

I failed.

The first night they shoved me in what used to be Tom’s Rhinoplasty, now a cleared out hellhole, I thought they were joking. They couldn’t just lock me up and tell me what to do. Especially not when what they wanted me to do was open my body up, like I was a tool, like I was something they could fucking use and throw away.

By the end of that first night, I knew. I had no escape.

The first woman who came in was gentle. The man after her, not so much.

Part of the new regime, I guess. Love doesn’t exist. Love is a myth, a legend. And people got to get their kicks somewhere.

Hi, I’m somewhere.

You know what it’s like being young and invincible, and then finding out that you were terribly, terribly wrong?

I could’ve run. I could’ve hid. But then the next morning I saw my old friends walk by my window.

You know what goes through my head then? _Oh_ , I thought. _This is what it’s like to be a ghost_.

One of the perks of being immortal is slowly watching your friends wither away to nothing.

The disease has affected them. Different ways, I guess. I don’t like to think about it. I don’t like to see their faces anymore. Yet I still can when I close my eyes. Every time.

You know another funny thing about holes? And immunity?

When you find out you’re not really immune.

I’m a carrier. That means I have the disease, but I pass it on to other people.

Technically speaking I can’t. I practice a safe business. The institution provides me with condoms and everything.

Only sometimes there’s a tiny hole.

It’s called a double-blind study. People come to me looking for that illusion of love. Some people never come back.

That’s why I’m careful tonight, and all the nights like it. When I sneak out in the woods, when I meet Christophe.

He doesn’t give me money. I don’t even like it. The sex is like pain, and I’m not a masochist. What being with him is, is this: it’s the only part of my life I can control anymore. It’s the only rebellion I can manage.

Then I go back to my box, to my prison. I go back to being a ghost, untouchable. Infecting random strangers who never did me any harm.

It’s not even really a rebellion. Not when they know I’m doing it.

She’s waiting for me at the door to my place.

I fumble for the keys in my pocket. I don’t even know why there’s lock on the place. It’s only on the outside, so they can lock me in when they feel like it. I can never lock my door against ‘paying’ customers.

I don’t even get to keep the money. Part of my tithe to the ‘institution’.

She smiles at me, a long slow smile.

She’s the only one who ever visits me regularly. She says its part of her benefits package, and giggles like it’s a really hysterical joke.

Have you ever hated somebody so much that you wanted them to die, even if you knew feeling that way was damning your soul in the process?

I feel my heart turning black, withering. And I don’t care. I hate. It’s all I have left.

The moon, that damned hole in the sky, makes the glitter on her cheeks sparkle like currents in a river. She pushes back the door to my home, my coffin.

Can immortals have a coffin? Because this place is mine.

I let her in.

I have no choice.


	3. I’m A Wild Light, Blinding Bright

_-Stan-_    

* * *

The pretty redhead sits on my desk, so still that it’s like she’s got a bow tied around her and a little card that reads ‘A Gift For You’.

That’s basically what she is, anyway. A bouquet, a gift for me.

Lucky me.

When she sees me, her eyes flash, and I know she doesn’t actually want to be here.

I don’t blame her. Nobody actually wants to be here.

She looks kind of familiar, and I must look the same to her because she drawls, “They say the devil that you know is better than a stranger. What do you think, Stan Marsh?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I reply, even though I do know. The insult was barely veiled.

She rolls her eyes, and they’re this greenish color that reminds me of someone I don’t want to think about, “Sure you don’t, honey.”

“They sent you over,” I say, and she nods slowly. Then she crosses and uncrosses her legs, displaying herself on my desk like some kind of adjustable Barbie doll.

She’s attempting to look seductive. It’s part of her job. But beneath that makeup, deep in those blazing eyes, all she has for me is contempt.

It reminds me of him even more.

“What’s it like being a soulless corporate lawyer?” she asks as I make my way over, shifting papers and pulling out my chair. It’s big. Comfy. Has these little golden rivets that catch whatever sunlight manages to stream through my floor to ceiling windows.

I slump into the chair, behind her, “I don’t know. What’s it like being a whore?”

Her eyes narrow and she answers icily, “You should ask your friend Kenny McCormick, down on Main Street. You guys used to be friends, right?”

I wince. Friends, yeah. I used to have those.

Kenny never had a problem selling himself.

It came back to bite him in the ass.

Now it’s none of my business.

“Are you going to do what you came here for?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.

I remember her now. I think we were in high school together. Not that it matters.

“You mean fuck you?” she turns away from me so that all I can see are the gold-red highlights in her hair, like sunset, “Is that what you want?”

“I’m a soulless corporate lawyer,” I tell her, “I wasn’t aware what I want matters.”

She snorts, “We don’t even have corporations inside this place.”

I hate it when people state the obvious. It’s so unnecessary, and the unnecessary needs to be surgically removed from South Park, like germs from a festering wound. Otherwise we’ll be left with chaos, and it will be a repeat of three years ago.

People crying in the streets.

People dying on the streets.

“I’m still a lawyer,” I reply casually, leaning back in my chair so I can catch a glimpse of the gunmetal gray sky behind me.

“You’re a hired thug,” she sniffs, “That’s all.”

I shrug. I’ve been called worse.

I spend my days working for the new regime, telling people what they can and can’t do. They have to live by the laws of the new Park County Governors, and if those laws don’t appeal to them…well, _dura lex, sed lex_.

It’s the phrase outside the abandoned courthouse up in North Park. The law is hard, but it is the law.

There’s a gun in the drawer of my desk. The handle shines like an oil slick every time I open the thing, even a crack.

The barrel tantalizes me like a tinfoil candy wrapper.

This girl in front of me, she means nothing. I could pull the gun out, show her that. She was a gift; mine to do with what I will.

The Governors wouldn’t come down on me for that. They couldn’t. It would be the easiest thing in the world to say that she broke the law. All she’d have to do is say a bad word against them.

Nobody has anything but bad words to say about that lot, so the law is broken every single day.

Or I could say that she showed symptoms. A pustule near the temple. A red mark on the inside of her elbow. It would be so very simple.

My sister would call me weak for hesitating. She works upstairs in one of those big corner offices you get when you’re in law enforcement. To do that you have to kill people. Every day.

She says that eventually it gets so that people stop looking human; just more and more like the monsters we’re supposed to be rounding up and shipping off to the bad end of town.

I had this best friend once. This super best friend. He warned me that this would happen. He told me that eventually whoever came into power within our tiny quarantine would declare Marshall Law. He told me it would be hard to tell the angels from the demons.

I hate him, that once best friend of mine. To the core of my being, I hate him.

The girl, my present, she’s still looking towards the wall. Softly she whispers, “I don’t know how you can stand working for those bastards.”

I slide my drawer open.

It is the law after all.


	4. You've Made Your Bed, So Sleep With Him

_-Kyle-_

* * *

I slam the front door of my house loud enough that Ike can hear me coming.

These days he doesn’t like it when people sneak up on him. These days he doesn’t like much.

I walk through the kitchen, ignoring the thick layer of dust coating the table.

We never use it. Not since mom and dad…well.

“It’s six in the morning. Where were you?” he asks me with disapproving eyes, bullet pupils surrounded by raccoon-like rings of Saturn. My little brother has the eyes of a Victorian romance hero.

“Out,” I reply shortly, “I had things to do.”

“Not the things I hope you were doing,” Ike mutters under his breath.

He doesn’t want me to hear him, so I pretend that I don’t. He doesn’t like what I do. He thinks there’s nothing wrong with The Way Things Are. He gets three meals a day and doesn’t have to deal with all the restrictions and authoritarian rules yet, so why shouldn’t think that?

One day, he’ll get old enough to realize what all these rules are about. He’ll realize he’s being strangled, slowly, by words written in ink on a paper somewhere not far from here. But right now he’s all about cinching the noose himself.

He acts like a prick. He pretends that he’s just like _them_. My baby brother dresses in black and thinks that maybe he can become a part of this thing that they’ve created.

It’s a living, moving, despicable system, and I won’t let him have anything to do with it. He resents me for that. I can see it in those piercing, romantic eyes.

Had life been normal, I’d be beating overly hormonal teenage girls away from him now.

Since life isn’t, I’m beating away all the things that go bump in the night instead. And he doesn’t even thank me for it.

“I was out this morning too,” he says, which is code for he only just came back from the club he left for last night.

“Oh?”

See? I can do supportive older brother. I can. Even when I think it might be better to buy a shotgun off the black market down off Brown Street and take it to both our heads.

“I walked by the law offices on main.”

“I expect so, since that’s the way home,” I bite my tongue to keep from saying more.

“They were bringing a body out. A girl. What do you think happened?”

I glance up, surprised that he cares. He’s seen so many bodies by now I’d thought he’d developed apathy towards the sight. I thought he bought into the motto of our new regime.

Fear. Repression. Coercion. Ignorance.

“Do you think the disease hit?”

Ah. There it is. The root of the problem. He doesn’t really care what happened to the girl. He’s just scared that the plague has broken out so close to home.

“I doubt it. She probably bought a bullet to the temple.”

“Oh,” Ike mutters, and then, “Do you think Stan shot her?”

His name makes me wince.

“I doubt Stan has the balls to shoot anyone.”

“You haven’t forgiven him yet?”

“For being a government pawn?” I ask briskly, light, “No.”

My thoughts are mixed, scrambled, fried. I hate it when Ike brings up Stan.

I know he thought of him like another older brother. Sometimes it makes me wonder if I’m not enough. Ike, have I failed you?

I would never ask. Which doesn’t stop him from asking me constantly, nagging, like a girl. _Why haven’t you spoken to Stan_?

He knows perfectly well why. Stan’s been indoctrinated.

Such a pretty word. Such an ugly truth. He’s not a friend of mine.

Two and a half years now, I’ve avoided him. I tell Ike it’s because we had a disagreement about our beliefs, which is true.

What’s truer is that I couldn’t stand seeing him transform into one of them.

Mom and dad got lucky. The disease took them early on so they didn’t have to stick around and witness how twisted and mangled their own friends had become.

Monstrosities. My town is filled with monstrosities, and I’m not just talking about the diseased.

“What are you doing today?”

“Nothing,” I reply, noncommittal. I glance at my watch. It’s six thirty three. I need a nap before I leave.

“Lynn Kitty Gelsa’s giving a speech down at town hall. It’s mandated we all be there.”

“What time?” I make believe I haven’t heard.

“It starts at twelve.”

“I’ll clear my schedule,” I say, my voice taking on a hard edge that Ike notices.

He blinks and ignores it. If he knew what I was really doing, I wonder if he’d turn me in?

Some institutions need to be shaken, broken, revitalized.

They say be the change you want to see in the world.

I’m the change. I’m the catalyst for new life.

Or maybe I’m just vengeance. Maybe all this is about making them pay.

I think of Stan, sitting in his posh office, and I grimace. I think of Kenny, on a window display, and I feel myself breaking.

I think of Cartman, and…I don’t want to think about Cartman.

Best friends. Together forever. What a load of crock.

“I’m going to sleep,” I tell Ike, who nods. He’s digging around in a cupboard for something edible.

Once he finds it, he’ll probably go sit in front of the TV and watch some bullshit propaganda. He’ll drift a little farther away from me.

I’m too tired to care. I fall into my bed, letting sleep swallow me up like a void.

When I wake up, there’s something wrong. Legs straddle my body. Long, sleek, and pale as marble. I glance up, into an unfamiliar face.

The woman on top of me smiles and asks, “Like it?”

It takes a minute for my sleep addled mind to work out the question, or even who I’m talking to. And then I realize.

“You look fine, Wendy.”

She pouts, her lips the color of koi fish against her too-white teeth, “Poo. You suck at compliments, Broflovski.”

“I suck at mornings,” I correct her, “Ask me again how you look at night.”

“If I’m even alive then,” she frowns.

Oh. I sigh, “As long as things go as planned, you’ll be fine.”

“When do things ever go as planned?”

“When I’m in charge,” I say, because I know that’s what they all think.

I’m a god, a legend. In another world, I’d be the dictator in charge. I’m that good.

Instead, I’m me.

Wendy smiles. She’s wearing a suit, bright pumpkin orange and garish. The skirt is slit so high I can see most of her upper thigh, where her nylons cut off. Her cleavage spills out of the tailored jacket, and I know she’s wearing nothing underneath. Just to reassure her, I say, “I didn’t even recognize you at first.”

She touches her short brown hair and smirks. The wig looks good on her. She knows it.

Her eyes blink at me, and I see they’re turquoise, like Caribbean water. Contacts.

“Thanks. Clyde and Craig are waiting downtown.”

“Great,” I groan, “Are you sure they’re up for this?”

Clyde and Craig and the way they’ve cared for each other in secret glances and hidden looks for three goddamned years. Each gentle touch they exchange makes me sick. Even thinking about it, my stomach churns.

There’s no room for weakness in my world. No room for love.

Wendy knows how I feel. She gives me this chastening look as she scrambles off my torso, “They’ll do fine. They’ve trained for this.”

In the dim light of my room, I answer, “I don’t like it.”

“Don’t worry about them, Kyle. Don’t worry about any of us. It’ll make it harder for you to do the things you need to.”

She’s right.

I check my watch.

Eleven o’clock. Time to go.


	5. Right Now, Well, I Could Use A Stiff Drink

_-Kenny-_

* * *

I wake up to the sound of a pickup truck backfiring, the noise ringing in my ears like a gunshot.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was a gunshot, although they’re pretty strict about gun control now. Turns out ‘vampires’ aren’t actually immortal. The first leader of the regime, Mike Makowski, got assassinated about a year ago.

Nobody ever figured out who did it.

The bastard deserved it, in my opinion.

My legs are stiff. My upper thighs feel like rocks under my fingers, and I rub them, groaning.

The morning after doesn’t hurt anymore. It doesn’t feel like anything, actually. With men, and with women. It’s just a play and I’m an actor.

I used to like sex. I used to like making other people feel good. Now I wonder if anything can ever make _me_ feel good again.

Imagine being violated. Over and over again. Eventually you have no say about who touches you and where. You’re less than human.

You’re me.

Being me kind of bites ass.

I glance out the floor to ceiling window of my prison.

There’s barely any sunlight, just the same dust bunny gray sky I’ve lived with all my life. Sometimes I wish the clouds would descend and smother the life out of every single one of us. We don’t deserve to walk the earth. We don’t deserve to live.

There’s cold coffee on the counter and a napkin with a kiss mark. The lipstick is red-brown, like rotted fruit.

I crumple the napkin and throw it in the garbage, more litter amongst condom wrappers and Chinese takeout boxes. Her bones deserve to rot in a dumpster full of similar debris.

It takes me half an hour to gather up my sheets and wash them in my miniscule bathroom. I don’t have any other way to rid them of the stench that haunts my household, and of the glitter that stained her cheeks. I hang them up to dry over the shower curtain, ignoring the multitude of discolored blots dotting the beige landscape of high thread count Egyptian cotton; the only real luxury they allow me.

Then I wander back into my living room, the movie theater, where I’m the twenty four hour show. The fact that I’m parading around in only a pair of ratty gray sweatpants doesn’t even draw the eye of the pedestrians on Main Street anymore. They’re all in a hurry.

Lynn Kitty Gelsa’s giving a speech today. She’s the second in charge as far as the vampire prick federation goes. She’s also a gigantic cunt, according to my weekly visitor, who happens to be quite the byotch herself, and should know.

I see a flash of silver outside the window, the familiar streamlined shape of a shovel. Blinking in surprise, I turn to face the back door. Seconds later he’s standing there, a smirk playing on his lips. I’m used to Christophe’s face, the lack of emotion, the hardened eyes, and the spiky, filthy hair of someone who spends his days digging for a living. I’m even used to this bastardization of a smirk, the glimpse of nicotine stained teeth and the scars marring one cheek.

What I’m not used to, what I never could have expected, is the single red rose he brandishes, rolling the too-green stem between his fingers.

“What’s that?” I ask in distaste, eyeing it like it’s got a touch of arsenic hiding in the petals.

“A flower. I believe zey say it eez an appropriate gift for one you are courting, no?”

He hands me the rose without ceremony. I don’t know what to do with it. I haven’t seen a real flower in years.

Dimly I recall my mother mentioning cutting the stem and placing it in water. Dad used to bring her tulips he plucked from the bed in front of city hall.

What the hell am I going to put it in? A used coffee mug? I relinquish the thing to my kitchen counter, the petals spilling across the white linoleum like a blood stain.

“You’re courting me, now?” I ask with more humor than I’ve been able to muster for a long while, “I think the sex is supposed to come after the courtship.”

“I like to do zings backwards,” Christophe comments, “And up, down. Doggie style.”

“Telling sex jokes to the town whore. Haha, how clever,” I remark without any real bite. I still can’t figure out what my secret fuck buddy is doing standing in my house in broad daylight.

He’s wearing a tight black shirt and stained brown corduroy pants. I can’t tell which stains are dirt, which are car oil, and which are blood.

The black, brown, and darker brown rainbow tarnishing his pants entrances me, but I don’t let myself get pulled in.

“You are not a whore,” he says, so quiet that I barely catch it.

“Okay,” I agree, correcting myself, “Prostitute.”

“Don’t say zis,” his eyes flash with anger, “You degrade yourself for zem.”

“They don’t leave me much choice,” I reply softly.

“No. Zey leave you no choice but to sell yourself. Losing ze will to fight; that is still an option zat is all yours.”

I frown, “Why are you here, anyway? Decided to become a paying customer?”

I stretch my legs, not sure if I’m ready for a rousing round of rough hate sex with Ze Mole.

Half the bruises on my body are from him. They’re the only bruises I wear like badges of courage. The only ones I wear with pride.

My secret rebellion is here, written all over my skin.

“No,” he wrinkles his nose in disgust, “I do not pay for what I already get for free.”

“Mom always warned me that would happen,” I tease nervously.

He looks at me, blank. I guess my humor really isn’t international. Count me out for the world stand up tour.

Like I could ever leave in the first place.

Christophe touches my lips, his eyes distant, “I came to say…” he pauses, takes a deep breath, “I came to say goodbye, mon cheri.”

His fingers are cold, like the flesh of a corpse. I shiver, without knowing why.

“You’re leaving?”

“Mayhaps. Eet eez up to that cock sucking beetch een ze sky,” he waves a hand dismissively towards the low-lying clouds outside.

“God? I don’t get it. Why is it up to God?”

“Zat asshole ‘as taunted me my whole life. Now we will meet face to face, and ‘e can explain some zings.”

“What? Christophe?”

I begin to panic. He sounds like he’s talking about dying. Shit. Is he infected? Did I give him the disease? Did I accidentally grab one of their double-blind study bullshit condoms?

He stares at me, long and hard, like he’s trying to drink in my image. I’m really fucking worried now.

“You. You are like ze angel. Don’t lower yourself to zer level.”

Angel? Cartman was an angel, and look what that got him. A one way ticket to an early grave.

“Chris,” I try again, reaching for his sleeve. He takes a step back; then without a word, turns around and leaves.

I want to follow him, but I can’t. There are too many people on the streets. Too many paying customers who will see me run, and why.

If I go after Christophe, he’ll end up with a bullet in his head, just like my dad.

He had to be kidding about what he said. He had to. 

Half an hour later, the earth quakes under my feet. I watch the glass display splinter, a zillion cracks forming like a sparkling spider web. Then it shatters, bursting in towards me.

I close my eyes, and it falls around me. Nothing but the rain.

I raise my hand to my cheek. There’s a bright red smear coloring my fingers.

Ouch.

That stung.

Within the hour, the red rose on my counter wilts and dies.            


	6. You Were So True To Yourself, You Were True To No One Else

_-Stan-_

* * *

So here’s how it goes.

One day you get up. You look in the mirror, and there’s blood on your hands. Only you can’t figure out whose it is, maybe because you never got her name, but probably because there’s too much for it all to be from one person. We walk around with scars on our heart and a smile on our face and expect to be able to change the world.

That’s a lie. I stopped caring about changing the world a long time ago.

When my boss asks me to go on a coffee run, I agree, mostly because I feel trapped in my tower of silicone and steel.

I remember when I was really young, mom used to read fairy tales to Shelley. She was always questioning things.

Why does the prince take so long to save Sleeping Beauty?

What does it mean to be happily ever after?

I didn’t even understand what the stories were about. Why was the damsel distressed in the first place? Why did Snow White eat the apple? She had to have known it was poison. I mean, Sleeping Beauty knew she was cursed, but that didn’t stop her from pricking her damned finger.

Almost like she did it on purpose.

Why?

Now I know. These fictional maidens put themselves in those situations because they had no other choice. They did what was necessary. They did it because if they didn’t, life was going to continue, forevermore, like some kind of fucked up horror story.

They could either live their entire lives condemned, or they could grab fate by the reigns and say ‘fuck no. I’m in control.’

Even if being in control means walking the line between life and death.

I’m on my way back from Harbucks, carefully balancing three cups of scalding hot coffee. The building I work in shines up ahead of me, like some kind of alien spaceship that’s somehow taken root in the core of the Earth.

The building was constructed in a hurry some five years ago, back when life was still normal and Those In Charge thought that South Park was ready for expansion. Back then I thought the windows looked like mirrors, showing each and every one of us the future.

Now I think the only future they show is the sickness growing inside us all. Not the plague. Just…sickness.

A woman in an orange suit prances by me, throwing me a devil-may-care smile. She looks familiar, but maybe that’s just my mind playing tricks on me.

I miss the curb, almost spilling my coffee, but she catches my arm.

“Careful,” she says, in a sweet voice. Then she continues on her way.

Since it was built, the building’s become representative of change. The new regime. They call it the Department. The Department of Law. The Department of Justice.

I always thought the place would stand long after the rest of us turned to dust.

At first I don’t realize that the ground under me is shaking, like the asphalt is being ripped apart. Mostly because my eyes are focused on the top floor of the Department, where the sun’s glinting much too brightly for a gray day like this.

And then I realize the sun’s reflection wouldn’t be orange, like flames licking at the sky.

The world is shaking, like an avalanche is about to devour our once quiet mountain town, snow ripping through our quarantine.

The world is shaking, but it’s not the world.

I stumble back as glass and metal rains down around me. I narrowly miss being beheaded by a construction beam.

The world is shaking, but actually, it’s only my legs.

* * *

 

It’s an hour and a half later.

One hundred and fifty casualties. Ten MIA. Thirty five dead.

Including the man who set the bombs in the first place.

They say his name is Christophe DeLorne. Now his name should be Pink Mist, since that’s pretty much what his body’s been reduced to.

I’m standing in front of what used to be the Department, with this Christophe kid’s liquefied remains beneath my dress shoes, not to mention what’s left of…everyone else.

I can’t think about that.

Instead I’m reduced to questions. I have to think logically, because if I think anything else, I might break down, and I cannot break down. Not right now.

Who did this? Was Christophe working by himself? How’d he even get into the Department in the first place?

The explosions were set off on the upper levels, which you need security clearance to access. He must have had help.

 _Why_ would he want to blow up the Department in the first place?

The questions run through my mind over and over again. A mantra. A chant. A plea.

I need a distraction.

My feet crunch over shattered glass and bits of drywall. The things that made up the Department, the building I thought would stand forever; it’s all here, spread out before me, its innards laid bare.

I round the corner, walking faster now. I’m struck by the pressing need to get away.

A flash of red against the cold, dead gray of the sky and the lifeless buildings of Main Street.

Everyone’s still at Lynn Kitty Gelsa’s speech. She probably doesn’t even know what happened, although the bombs rocked half of South Park.

I see the red again, and it reminds me of the fire in the sky. But this, this is a different kind of fire. I know exactly who caused it.

I chase him, and maybe he hears me, because he’s running. That’s okay, because I need something to run after. I need to feel like a predator; anything that will make me feel like a little less of a victim.

It’s when I corner him in the alleyway that he turns on me, eyes blazing. He’s the brightest color in this town, the most beautiful thing in existence. Just looking at him is like prodding an open wound with a stick. It physically hurts.

His eyes are boring holes through my chest, and suddenly, I have answers.

“It was you,” I say. It’s not a question.

“Of course it was me,” he spits back, “You doubted it?”

The venom in his voice is lethal, but I don’t care.

I should have known what just happened was his fault. I know how much he despises what’s being done to us.

He equates our little quarantine to hell, and maybe it is.

I know he’s been working in the background all these years. Assassinations. Reconnaissance. Stolen information. I’m pretty sure even the thriving black market is somehow a part of his plan. No one ever knows where he’s going to strike next. He’s got moles everywhere.

Well, one less mole now, if the bloodstains round the corner are any indication.

Still, I thought that even Kyle fucking-I’m-a-revolutionary Broflovski couldn’t go this far.

I hate him.

I hate him because I need him. I always have. But he’s a zealot. He believes he’s doing the right thing.

Isn’t that the point? He believes in his cause, in killing the goddamned fascist government more than he values his own life.

“How could you do it?” I ask, my voice quiet and sure. My fingers itch for the trigger of my gun, but it was safe in a drawer in a room that ceased to exist, all because of him.

“How could you not?” he asks back, glaring at me like I’m the vilest thing in the world.

To him, I probably am.

He probably doesn’t understand why I don’t thank him for blowing up my life. In his eyes, he freed me from my fairytale tower. What a fucking prince.

The problem is, he’s the one who put me there in the first place.

Christophe died today. One day it’s going to be Kyle.

I never could stand the thought.

And the real reason I hate him is because I’m helpless to do a damned thing about it. He cut me out of his life when I tried to convince him to stop. He told me it’d hurt less. When I wouldn’t buy it, he told me I’d changed.

Then he convinced himself it was true.

See, I was one of his goddamned moles, one of his informants in the Department. I started working there because he pleaded with me. He told me when the walls went up and we all started listening to our vampire preachers that things would go bad.

They did.

Then he told me that we had to take responsibility for change.

For changing what, I asked?

Everything, he'd said.

So I got a job with the Department. Because…oh, I don’t know.

Because I loved him.

Because I thought he was a visionary.

Because I thought he was right.

I just loved him too damned much to not be scared for him. Every night I would come home, to him and Ike.

(My house had stopped being mine the second my parents disintegrated into madness.)

Four months into it, Kyle stopped caring about me. He stopped caring about everything that didn’t have to do with his fucking mission.

He kicked me out. He told me I was different. I was the enemy.

And one day I woke up and it had stopped being a lie.

All I have is left is hatred, and underneath it, him, and all the things I never got to say.

I’ll always wonder if it was because I was too much of a coward to blurt it out or because he was too deaf to hear it.

Cartman was right.

I’m the biggest pussy in the universe. I let myself get Jewed out of love.

He always said Kyle would rob me blind. He just meant of my wallet, not my soul.

I glare back at Kyle, letting every bit of anger, every thought I’d been suppressing, channel into this one look. I kind of hope that maybe the force of it will stop him dead in his tracks.

Make him apologize.

Make him feel something for me, something other than revulsion.

Maybe it will make me feel something more for him too. I think I’d love to feel anything other than what I do.

Betrayal. Hurt. Gut-clenching anger.

“My sister was in there,” I finally let myself say it, “She’s dead.”

He shoves his hands in his pockets.

“Your sister was a bitch,” he says, as if it doesn’t matter.

Maybe it doesn’t, to him. There’s nothing in that green gaze. Not even pity.

Rage is simmering in my veins, and I scream, “She was still my sister!”

Casually, he replies, “That girl you killed this morning was somebody’s sister.”

How the hell does he know about that?

I let my voice lower to a growl; go chilly with how much I despise him, “Somebody has nothing to do with me.”

He glares at me, his gaze a deep freeze, “But it has everything to do with me. What you did is exactly what I’m fighting against. You used to believe in it.”

“I used to believe in you.”

Maybe it’s a rage blackout that causes it. Maybe it’s everything I’ve been holding back for two and a half years.

Or maybe it’s because my last remaining family member is dead, and I’m now well and truly alone, and something in me still needs my best friend.

I press my lips to his, but they’re cold, unmoving.

He shoves me hard away and says, “You’re disgusting. I’d hoped Christophe would have killed you too.”

My insides are forming frost. Every word he says to me ices me over just a little bit more.

This isn’t Kyle.

This is nothing but a statue.

Even so, I can’t say anything as he turns and walks away.


	7. I Want You To Know It’s A Little Fucked Up

_-Kyle-_

* * *

They say one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. I like to think that’s true.

The thing is, I know it’s not. I’ve read the books. I know the score.

Did you know that terrorism has no actual set definition? It’s a word that means a lot of things, and nobody can actually say what terrorism is and what it isn’t, because it’s a word that has no boundaries, either.

I like that.

Well, not the word. Because without boundaries or not, it’s still a word that tastes foul in my mouth. The day they branded me, and what I stand for as terrorism, my stomach nearly came up.

It was the day I realized that what I stand for isn’t what everyone else stands for. I’m an anomaly. Abnormal.

But I like the idea of not having boundaries. Of being able to do whatever I want, without limit. Maybe I like it because it’s an impossible thing, and impossibility, to me, is the goal. You know? It’s something to strive for; doing impossible things.

Back to that thing, that word that makes me puke. Our fangy friends branded me as a terrorist exactly a year ago. Of course, they don’t know that I’m me; they branded their fictional idea of me.

If they knew who I was, I wouldn’t be living to talk right now.

My organization, which doesn’t have a name; they protested it. Craig, Clyde, Wendy, Christophe, and the rest. They tried to make me feel better.

They said, K _yle, you’re not a terrorist. You’re a guerilla. You’re a freedom fighter_.

I knew the truth.

As far as fighting goes, we’re not guerillas. We know we’re not saving anyone from this hell.

They say that terrorism is an urban weapon, that the bastards aim for non-combatants, work clandestinely, and blend easily into the civilian sphere. Just like everyone else.

Meanwhile guerilla fighters work rurally, recruit civilians rather than killing them, and are more visible. They also try to work with ranks.

Gee. Which definition sounds more like me?

In one I’m a murderer and in one I’m a hero.

I’d pretend I’m the hero, any day of the week. Except…I don’t do self delusion.

I’m a killer.

How many people did I kill, just today? How many people will I kill tomorrow? All in the name of unseating a few vampires? All in the name of taking back a town that’s overrun by monsters?

I know what’s going to happen. Even if I succeed, even if I get rid of this government, a new one will pop up. Everyone wants a little power. Everyone wants a little control. Civilization is a distant thought.

We’re degenerating, back to the caveman days. We’re gladiators in an arena.

Soon we’ll be nothing. Soon we’ll all be dead.

And I’m contributing to that, and it’s killing me.

The books tell me that terrorism rarely succeeds outside of democratic countries. Park County definitely isn’t a democracy.

Yet we’re succeeding. Today, we succeeded. We gained a little bit of ground.

Maybe it’s because the fascists running our little piece of this hellhole are inexperienced. They haven’t quite learned to use their fangs and claws yet, despite all their bluster.

Christophe’s dead.

The thought haunts me, and he’s not the only one. I didn’t just kill everyone in that building, I killed a friend.

But he knew what he was doing. He knew the second he strapped explosives to his body what he was getting into.

I wonder what was going through his head.

He wasn’t supposed to be a suicide bomber. He wasn’t supposed to be a martyr.

He was supposed to be a normal kid, with a normal life.

The plague stole that from us all. And then the new regime came and stole it all again.

Maybe it seems stupid. Why kill each other over a couple of rules? A couple of laws?

Because it’s not right. The way the world is now, it’s skewed. And nothing will ever be right again if I don’t achieve order once more.

I know I’m being extreme. I know that hurting innocent people isn’t the way to get what I want. We tried assassination. We offed the original leader, Mike Makowski, a year ago. I thought it would send a message. It wasn’t just symbolic, it was a damned neon sign.

Stop what you’re doing, or die.

All that happened was fucking Ryan Ellis stepped up to take his place. They don’t get scared of dying, because there are always more of them.

So I decided to send a new message.

If we can’t get rid of them, we’ll get rid of their supporters. We’ll kill off their public bases, one by one by one until they step down.

At least, I thought we would.

Then Stan cornered me.

He kissed me. Do you know what it was like?

It wasn’t our first kiss. That was on a day with sunlight. A day with happiness. A day where my mother’s cooking made the kitchen smell like heaven, and we were sprawled out on the carpet watching TV. I remember he was laying on his belly, and then he looked at me cockeyed. I thought he had some idea, some prank to play. Mom said we were always up to mischief.

But it wasn’t a prank. He stared at me, considering, and then his lips were on mine.

There were a lot of kisses after that.

The thing is…Stan’s kiss is fire. Stan’s kiss is passion, fury. It cuts me like a machete.

When I’m with him, I’m powerless.

I had to stop being with him.

So I left him to the dogs, getting mad when he became what I’d made him. When he became a part of the damned institution.

At least it made it easy to hate him.

And then, today, I killed his sister.

Well, technically Christophe killed his sister, but the order to attack the Department came from me.

I think maybe I was hoping Stan would die. I told him so. But not for the reasons he thinks.

I saw him glaring at me. Hate. Accusing eyes. He thinks I’m a cold, uncaring bastard, and it suits me. I need him to think that. If he didn’t, he’d come back to me. He’d come back to the fight, and then he’d die. Everyone around me dies.

At least this way, Stan has a chance. As long as he hates me, he might keep on breathing.

The questions remains, why don’t I just stop? It’d be so easy to lay down my proverbial gun, to end the violence. To let the injustice of the world run rampant.

I’ll tell you why not.

I keep going because if I stop there’s nothing left.

It’ll be the end of me.

I’d rather cause the end of the world.

* * *

 

I walk into my kitchen. Wendy’s waiting, wearing jeans now, dangling her legs over the counter.

I ignore her, instead walking over to Ike, whose face is red.

“Are you okay?”

I touch my hand to his forehead. It feels like ice. The pink in his cheeks is from the cold.

“I think I’m infected,” he tells me cheerfully.

“Do brains seem like a tasty alternative to pizza?”

“No.”

“Then you’re fine,” I roll my eyes and smile at Wendy. I try to pretend that everything’s good. I try to pretend I’m not a killer.

“You missed Miss Gelsa’s speech,” Ike tells me disapprovingly. Like I care what that vampire cunt had to say.

“I did,” I agree, searching the cupboards for food. You would think we’d have a shortage in the county, but not yet. It’s provided by the government, the real government, outside these walls.

Sometimes I worry they’ll cut off our food supply.

Then what will we eat? Each other?

It wouldn’t surprise me.

Ike frowns at me, his voice sad, “You might get in trouble for skipping. They kept a roster. Why can’t you accept things the way they are?”

“Because I’ve already gone too far,” the words slip out of my mouth before I can stop them. Wendy gives me a disproving glare.

“What do you mean?” my little brother asks.

“I don’t know. Everything. Nothing,” I mumble, keeping my eyes trained on the cabinets.

“You’re so fucking cryptic sometimes. I don’t even know you anymore.”

Yeah. I can empathize. I don’t even know myself anymore.

Ike tells me he’s going out. I shrug and refuse to watch him leave.

It’s better this way. I need to distance myself from him. Christophe died today, but one day soon, it’ll be me.

Nagging Ike, mothering him; it won’t help him when I’m gone.

I pull a box of cereal off a shelf and turn to Wendy, “You’re not dead.”

“I’m not,” she replies with a grin, “Everything went without a hitch.”

“You shed that disguise.”

“Yeah. Wearing a dead chick’s clothes is mega gross, thanks for asking.”

“At least you didn’t have to dig them out of the dumpster,” a voice calls from the living room.

Craig.

I pour myself a bowl of cereal, and then Wendy and I leave the kitchen. Craig has made himself comfortable on my couch, wearing jeans and an old hooded sweatshirt. His black hair is shaggy, deeply in need of a cut. There’s a familiar brunet boy languishing with his head in Craig’s lap.

Of course. God forbid Clyde stops touching Craig for a single minute. The two are one living, breathing unit.

I used to be like that with Stan. Until I surgically cut him from my life.

Its better this way, I remind myself, taking a seat on the floor beside the couch.

“So Christophe croaked,” Craig starts casually, never one to mince his words.

“That was part of the plan.”

The fact I can say it without my voice shaking is sick. Even though we all braced ourselves, Christophe was a friend.

My friend’s dead. I sent him to his death. And I can’t even fucking grieve for him because then I’d be weak.

That’s the one thing I absolute cannot do, not even for Christophe.

“What next?”

“We wait. We see how they react. If they don’t give in, we hit them again.”

“And when do we stop?” Clyde asks, rolling over so I can see his bright eyes. He’s been crying.

Didn’t I just ask myself this?

Craig sees the look in my eyes and takes over for me. He leans down, kissing Clyde on the cheeks. I ignore the twinge of jealousy that spikes through me. He whispers, “We don’t. We don’t stop until they surrender.”

“And if they don’t?” Clyde asks, rubbing at his red rimmed eyes. He’s staring at Craig like he’s the whole world.

I hate it.

“Then the city burns. And we burn with it.”

Clyde buries his face in Craig’s neck. He’s crying again.

And I think it doesn’t matter if they surrender or not, because at this point everyone in this room is going to go up in flames either way.  


	8. You Have Me Still Because I’m Breathing

_-Kenny-_

* * *

 

There’s a knock on my door, a rhythmic pounding that’s almost soothing.

Snowfall whispers along the street outside, but I can’t see it. For the first time in years, I can’t look beyond my boarded-up window. For the first time in years, no one can look back in at me. I don’t know how to live anymore without putting on an act for all the inquisitive eyes peering at me. I don’t know how to live just for myself.

So instead of doing anything at all, I’ve been slumped over on my bed, counting the water stains on the ceiling.

Cuts on my skin throb, in time with the knocking. I should get up, but I’ve forgotten how to move. I’m like a broken action figure. Out of batteries.

Then a voice joins the knocking. A voice I haven’t heard in forever.

“Kenny! I know you’re in there. Open the goddamned door!”

There’s no way that’s who I think it is. It can’t be. Its goddamned impossible.

But god stopped existing a long time ago for me, and he doesn’t seem to care about being damned.

“Kenny, _open_ the _fucking_ door,” the voice on the other end sounds irritated. Then it reconsiders, “Unless you are fucking. In which case, dude, don’t open the door.”

I stand, world-weary. My body feels like it belongs to an old man.

I wonder if any old man has ever seen as much as I have.

I pause at the handle, needing to compose myself. I can’t look miserable. After all, there are starving kids out there. I’m not the only person who goes through this kind of shit.

Somehow, the thought doesn’t make me feel any better.

I open the fucking door.

“Kyle.”

I want to say his name again and again, because he’s there. He’s there, and he’s the best thing I’ve ever seen.

He’s got green eyes that glow, that blaze.

“Kenny,” he exhales.

Green eyes that are all I can see. 

Above his head the indigo clouds are standing out against an air brushed sky. It’s the most beautiful evening South Park has seen in a long while. But my vision is engulfed in green.

And then; he kisses me.

Don’t think, I tell myself. Don’t even breathe.

I kiss him back, hard.

His hands tangle in my hair. We stumble back into my prison, my knees hitting against the edge of my soiled bed. We fall backwards, and he laughs, humorlessly. Then he’s kissing me again, pressing against me harder still.

I know what it’s like to be consumed by love. To be consumed by want, by need, by desire. For years, the one person I wanted was the one person I couldn’t have.

Now his eyes glow heartbreakingly green as he stares down at me, pulling back once more. The intensity is overwhelming.

I don’t think I’ve been aroused by something other than pure lust for a long time. But now, with his irises following my every move, I’m turned on not simply by his body, but because it’s him.

I’m harder, hornier, than I ever could have imagined.

When did I start wanting him so badly?

A long time ago. But he belonged to Stan.

I could see it in their smiles, when they looked at each other. Even if they never officially announced it, it was obvious. I had missed my chance at birth, it seemed.

“Kenny,” he says again, his voice strained by lust.

This is the one thing I can do well. The one gift I can give him.

“Blood, violence; that’s what you like?” I ask him, because I’ve heard rumors. I’ve kept up to date on him, even if he abandoned me.

He nods slowly, devouring me with those green, green eyes, “You know what I want.”

It isn’t a question.

He kisses me until my lips are rubbed raw, stinging with blood. He does other things to me too, things that I’ve done before, but never really enjoyed.

For a moment I wonder if it’s really happening to me, if it’s really me he sees every time he blinks. But he rarely blinks; no, he keeps his eyes trained on me most of the time. He has the most powerful, passionate stare I’ve ever experienced. I’m almost embarrassed. Almost.

Afterwards, everything is hazy and surreal.

We tell each other things. Not like the things we used to talk about; video games and porno magazines.

No. We tell each other secrets. Things we can’t tell anyone else.

“You can’t ever leave the South Park vampire society,” I tell him these words, the ones I know by heart, “Even when you’re dead.”

I’m entwined in his arms. I feel safe for the first time in three years, even if it’s a false safety. Even if there’s nothing he can do to protect me.

Even though I know he wouldn’t actually try to.

Annie Bartlett comes to see me, I tell him, every Tuesday. I show him the cigarette burns on my arms.

She calls me her rag doll.

“Son of a bitch,” he curses, staring at my scars. He’s repulsed, I think. But then he embraces me tightly. He pulls me close, and trails kisses down my neck. He kisses all my scars until I think I can see the stars through my ceiling. He kisses me in places I haven’t been kissed since life stopped being normal.

I cum in his mouth, and he swallows it. I wish he could swallow me whole.

“You dwell on the fringe of society, even though they placed you here, at the center of it all,” Kyle points around helplessly with his free arm, “They made an example of you. That’s why people are scared of you. That’s why I’m scared of you.”

“Are you scared of me?” I ask, sort of amused, “I’ve heard about the things you’ve done.”

It’s like an iron curtain slams down behind Kyle’s eyes. They don’t glow anymore.

“All I do is create more monsters,” he says.

This time it’s my turn to comfort him.

“Like who?”

“I killed Christophe,” he tells me, looking at the freshest scars, the still open wounds on my hands and arms.

“I know,” I say quietly, “But that’s not who you’re thinking of.”

“Stan,” he whispers. His eyes are still dark, but there’s an apology in there, somewhere.

Somewhere, deep inside, Kyle’s still a little boy. The same one I used to idolize. The same one I love.

“It’s okay,” I tell him, and I let my tongue talk across his body. I run my fingers over the patch of fire near his thighs, my mouth sucking hard on his hipbone. I take hold of him, and I say, “Let me be him for a little while.”

Kyle cries out Stan’s name when I swallow him whole.


	9. Under A Spell I Can’t Break

_-Stan-_

* * *

Upon the demolition of my workplace, a meeting is called.

Meetings with Them are never a good thing.

They sit at the front arc of the round conference table in city hall, staring at us with dark, wild eyes. Like sharks, ready to devour everything.

There are three of us, sitting still, hoping to avoid having to meet Their gaze.

My boss. And my boss’s boss. And me. 

I don’t even understand why I’m here, not entirely. The last blast took out my entire floor, and I suppose They want to know why it was a target.

I think it’s pretty obvious. My people handle- or handled the law.

Christophe DeLorne took out the enforcers, and then he took out their backup.

The Law. Hard and true.

Can’t they see the poetry in that?

Maybe not. Then again, I don’t pretend to understand Them at all. I don’t even think They like the law, which is stellar now that I’m the only one left to uphold it. Me and my boss, and my boss’s boss.

My knowledge of Them is limited, of course. They’ve been courting me for ages, like with that girl, my candy coated gift that left with a bullet in her brain.

Probably kinder than ending up in a million bits on the sidewalk. I had to walk over pink chunks to get to city hall for this meeting.

I’m special; They tell me when no one else is listening. I’m next in line to replace the higher ups, the nervous, fat tub of blubber that barked orders and saved my life when he sent me for coffee. He only managed to live because he’d been in the bathroom, getting serviced by his secretary.

I think They know. I think They’re eyeing him like he should be dead right this second. Like he would be better off six underground.

They keep smiling at me, which is more unsettling than anything else.

They keep these plastic fangs in their mouth. Some of Them just filed Their teeth to points. I can’t imagine it was a pleasant experience, but I’ve got a sweet tooth, a sensitive mouth, and a low pain threshold.

I try not to smile at all, because I think maybe that’s all the signal They’d need to jump up and eat me. Because I’m special.

You think being special is a good thing. You think about all the years you spend, hoping, praying that things might just turn out the way they do in your dreams. You’ll be chosen, by fate, by destiny, for something more. More than any human has a right to.

Nobody’s special, not really. There are no epic adventures. There is no one waiting in the wings, ready to tell you that you’re mankind’s next big hero.

Nobody gets to save the world.

You’re lucky if you get a chance to save yourself.

Kyle used to tell me I was special too.

I guess he forgot.

Now he’s off trying to live the dream, the one all of us have. He’s trying to be a big fucking hero, and the only thing it’s getting him is an advance on death.

I try not to think about Kyle at all too, because They might be able to read my mind.

They’re not real vampires, I know. They’re just a bunch of stupid kids I went to school with, who somehow discovered the way to ooze power out of their pores.

I had a friend once, a really amazing friend. He was the same way. He talked like Hitler, but everybody listened. We all hated him, but we would listen because you just knew. This kid was going to do something great. Maybe terrible, but great. He was special, with a capital S, if there is any such thing.

When the disease first hit, he set about trying to wrangle the government, the one outside, into researching an antidote, some kind of vaccine, anything but building the wall that blocks out the goddamned sun. He tried his hardest to save our town, even though Kyle always said he only did it to save his own huge ass.

He almost succeeded.

Then one long day, after too much campaigning, he came home and found his mother was infected.

She was the only one who really called him special back then, and now we all think he must have been.

Because she fucking ate him.

I don’t know what happened to Mrs. Cartman after that. The vampire kids were slowly rising to power. Kyle even theorized that they were the ones who made sure she got infected. Said they had her screw a carrier. Someone like Kenny.

Oh, I know all about Kenny.

I should feel horrible that one of my best friends is a whore.

Not just a whore, but one the government uses for _population control_. That’s what they told me they call it. Population control, like the whole county is made up of rats, or termites, or roaches.

But I don’t care. Even before all this happened, I would watch him.

Kenny’s got these eyes, these eyes that have seen heaven and hell, and you can tell. He’s wise. An old soul, whatever. And he always, always, always had his eyes trained on my property.

When they locked him up in that shack on Main, I felt relieved. I thought, now he can’t get to my boyfriend.

It was soon after that Kyle turned to stone. He set me up an appointment with the Devil, and I’ve been Hell’s advocate ever since.

I think this must be Hell, after all. I don’t know how else to explain Them.

Lynn Kitty Gelsa smiles at me, her teeth razor sharp and saliva wet.

“Stan,” she says, her voice as young and carefree as an elementary school girl’s, “Why don’t you tell us your side of the story?”

Now I have an entire school of sharks looking at me. The special one.

I turn cold, like ice. Like a statue. Like Kyle.

I let frost form in my words as I tell Them what happened, because that’s all I can do.

When I’m done, They ask me how I think They should deal with the situation.

I have a few ideas.

After the meeting, They congratulate me. Ryan Ellis tells me I’m handling this ordeal way better than the higher ups. My boss is still glued to his seat, shaking like a baby.

His boss is staring out the window, as vacant as a real zombie.

Tommy Petros says I’m a true professional.

Annie Bartlett kisses me on the cheek, and I have to wipe the sparkles she leaves there away when she’s not paying attention.

Allison Merch says she suspects great things in my future, and I wonder if they’ll be great and terrible.

Phillip Russ gives me a promotion.

And Lynn Kitty Gelsa tells me she always knew I was special.

That's it. That's all there is.

We don’t get our own theme song. We don’t get praise and adoration. We don’t get anything but the burdens we carry with us, and those burdens mass up, accumulate, overflow. You add more to the pile until your heart is broken and you have nothing left. You’re empty and full at the same time.

Congratulations. You’re just like everyone else.


	10. What A Wonderful World

_-Kyle-_

* * *

I climb out of Kenny’s bed early in the morning. He’s tangled up in his lone sheet, looking perfect, innocent; things I never would have associated with Kenny McCormick before the disease spread.

Sex with him was a strange experience; violent and necessary. He knew every move I would make, it felt like, and I wondered. Am I so predictable?

I know it would be better if I stayed. I know he needs me to stay, to reaffirm his belief that life doesn’t suck. That he can have one good thing left in this hellhole.

I can’t be that one good thing.

Yes, it would be so simple to drop everything and stay tucked away in this corner of Main Street. To never leave, and to never have to think, or hurt, or know that the world’s falling to shit around us.

To never remember everything we’ve lost.

But all my staying would do would be to put Kenny in harm’s way.

That’s what I tell myself as I walk out the back door.

Is it selfish for me to live my life this way? Yes. There is no other answer. I push people away, so they’ll be safe, except it’s a lie.

I push them away because it’s easier for me. I don’t have to worry this way. I don’t have to wonder if what I’m doing is wrong.

I don’t have to think that my life might just be worth staying alive for.

Stan was like that. He made me think that.

Stan. Shit.

There’s another reason I can’t stay. His face pops up fucking everywhere. On my neighbors, on my little brother…on Kenny, when I was balls deep inside him.

I’m a horrible person. I’m going straight to hell when I die, which might be sooner than I ever planned.

At least it will be on my own terms.

Stan disagrees with the government. Logically, I know that. He just never had the willpower to fight. I made him into a soldier, and when I dropped him, he turncoated. It was his only option; what’s a soldier to do without an army?

You can tell, though. Those TV press releases they put out, with him talking about the bombing; he still doesn’t agree with them. There’s a piece of the old Stan Marsh in there, but it’s just tucked down so deeply inside, he can’t fully access it anymore.

I tried to protect him, dropping him like that, but all it did was leave him worse off. I told him he’d be better off dead than working with them, and I believe that.

I just can’t be the one to do the killing. That’s the one thing I’ll never be able to achieve, no matter how hard I try.

Sometimes I feel helpless. Like all I can do is curse at the sky. Walking home from Kenny’s, I think I’m decaying away to nothing, here in the center of this rotten apple city. Everything I do to stop it makes the degradation worse.

If I stop, if I think, I’ll see the faces of all those mindless drones who worked in Stan’s shiny office building. I’ll realize I’m not a revolutionary; I’m a murderer.

It’s all Their fault.

Or is it?

Maybe life wouldn’t have been better without the damned plague and the City Governors. Sure, there’s the possibility that we could have grown up in plastic, cookie cutter lives. White picket fence-dog-two kids. Go to the ‘rents house every Sunday. It could have been normal, and brilliant. But there’s the same possibility that something even worse might have happened. This is South Park, after all.

So yeah, there’s every indication that I should be thanking Them for giving me a chance to live a modest life, with my brother.

I could drop this rebellion. I could settle for the Way Things Are. I could become plastic, just like the rest of the county.

Only, if I did that, it’d be a risk. Once we become pliant to their will, like fattened calves, they could easily lead us to the slaughter. And there’d be no one, no one like me.

I’m not saying that being willing to lay down your life for a cause is admirable. If anything, it’s stupid. Life is a gift, and making a martyr of yourself may be a sort of gift to others, but it fucking sucks for the one doing it.

As Cartman would have said, Jews don’t like to give gifts anyway.

So why then? Why?

For my brother, and the hypothetical, maybe-still-shit life I should be leading with him.

For Stan, and the love I let putrefy into something twisted.

For Kenny, because I should have stayed and been that one good thing.

And maybe for myself too. Maybe because deep inside, I’m an idealist and a romantic, and I need the world to be a better place.

Maybe.

* * *

 

I go over the plan with them one last time. It’s twice as dangerous as Christophe’s mission. He was an unknown, a part of the Park County Underground. There was a reason they called him Ze Mole.

Craig and Clyde aren’t like that. They belong to the light. If I had an ounce of decency in me, I wouldn’t let them go through with this.

I ogle them openly. They’re so sickeningly wrapped up in each other, it’s like they don’t even realize I’m here at all. I’m an apparition; one they have no trouble ignoring.

And I know better. There’s no place for people like them in this town full of so many rules they’re choking. It’s only a matter of time before the Governors install anti-sodomy laws, and that will leave the two of them SOL.

I’m doing them a favor, really. I’m making them a modern day Romeo and…Julio, or something.

“It’s time,” I say, and darkness falls like a hood around Craig’s features.

“Bring the rain,” Clyde answers with a nervous smile. They’re both strapped and ready to go. Wendy’s already in place, dressed like she belongs in some Roadside bar instead of City Hall.

We’ve all said our goodbyes.

I should give them a speech. Encourage them. Tell them that this is the right thing to do.

Instead I walk away.

* * *

 

I’m taking Ike down to a study circle.

It happens once a week. Normally I don’t walk him, but considering what’s going to happen today, I’ve decided he’ll be better off with me by his side.

Outside our house, Old Mrs. Perkins is watering her garden. She glances up when she hears our footfall and waves a fond hello.

“You boys are lucky,” she tells me, her kind smile hurting my eyes, “You still have each other.”

Ike snorts and looks away.

He wishes he didn’t have me, I think. He wishes he had his old brother, the one who listened and obeyed, and never spoke without being spoken to first. The good son. The ideal sibling.

The one that died and was replaced with me.

I thank our neighbor and hustle Ike down the street, hissing for him to keep his head down today.

“Why?” he asks, and I don’t know how to give him an answer that won’t implicate him.

“Because you’re lucky,” I tell him, “And if you want to stay that way, do what I tell you.”

He glares at me, and I can see the question in his ironic eyes.

 _Are we lucky, really? Tell me, Kyle_ , he seems to be pleading.

There’s no right way to tell him that he’d probably be luckier if I was dead. I think he already knows, anyway.

I feel like I’m sucking on ice, frost forming in my words when I try to tell him goodbye.

Before I can, sirens pierce the sky. Ike stares at me, long and hard, his expressive eyes asking how I knew.

Then he’s off on a run, away from studying and being normal. He’s going straight towards the center of town, towards City Hall. I follow, hot on his heels.

We can see the flames licking the clouds long before we see the actual building.

At last, Ike skids to a halt.

The building’s looming ahead of us. Only half of it is on fire. The other half is standing solid, and even the flames are in the process of being extinguished as I watch.

They failed.

There’s a dark blot on the front of the building. I peer closer.

There’s Craig.

He’s an asshole. He’s loud, obnoxious, and all too blunt. He’s also one of the greatest friends a guy can ask for; intensely loyal and completely invested.

He’s dead.

Not only is he a corpse, but his body dangles like a pendulum, upside down. The ropes around his blackened, bloody feet are crusted with blood, but the rest of his figure is pristine. White. Naked.

Until you see his neck. Blood drips, crimson and sluggish over the contours of his face, through his reddened black hair, to the concrete walkway.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

My baby brother makes a strangled sound.

I cover Ike’s eyes with one hand, pulling him into my chest. My shirt is wet in seconds.

I’ve never seen my little brother sob so hard, not even when our parents died. But it only lasts a few seconds, and then he’s pulling away, like the tears never flooded out at all.

In some ways, he’s a soldier too.            


	11. It's In The Water, Baby

_-Kenny-_

* * *

 

I know what Kyle hides behind his determined smile. I know that he thinks he’s out to change the world.

He thinks he’s noble. He thinks he’s revolutionizing what’s left of Park County. He thinks he’s the savior.

I know he’s one of the only ones in this town who feel that way.

What Kyle doesn’t get is that people like their lives. They like being controlled. They like not having to think for themselves.

I don’t leave my nest much, but I have customers. One came in and told me about a redhead preaching on the street corner like one of those homeless dudes with a sign reading ‘The End Is Nigh’. He tried to rouse the townsfolk’s interest.

No one listened.

My client seemed to think the problem was that people are happy. They’re fed, the disease is kept at bay, and they don’t have to worry about things like work, school, and responsibility. Not if they don’t want to. It’s an ideal life.

It’s fucking utopia, man.

Only a small minority gets screwed. Like, say, the whore on Main Street. Or the idealist who realizes we’re backpedaling into the dark ages.

People don’t want to be free from a cage they can’t see. They’re not going to thank Kyle for disturbing their peace.

In the morning I wake up, and he’s not there.

I knew he wouldn’t be. He’s not the cuddly type, and I’m not Pretty Woman. I didn’t make love to him thinking he’d take me far away from all this. We’re surrounded by a wall; there’s absolutely nowhere to go even if we tried.

Not that he would. Kyle’s not my Prince Charming, and I don’t believe in fairy tales.

That doesn’t mean it’s not some kind of bittersweet. I can’t say I didn’t imagine what would happen if the person I wanted most wanted me. If he came into my life again for real, like a whirlwind; how good would that be?

In my head I build an imaginary life together with him, and sure I feel pathetic about it afterwards, but the looming question still exists. What if?

What if nothing. A knock sounds off on my door, and I come back to reality. I’m in the service industry, and it’s time to get my act together.

Sometime around one I hear the news. Craig Tucker and Clyde Donovan tried to blow up City Hall. They made the attempt while the vampire kids were out; I guess it was supposed to be less of a full out attack and more of a warning.

Half the place looks like a failed bomb shelter, according to the John who tells me. The other half is intact; Tucker failed. They strung him up outside the building as a warning.

It’s the Middle Ages again; we’re sticking heads on pikes and burning women for wearing red ribbons.

That’s what happened to Wendy Testaburger, anyway. They caught her fleeing the scene, and they burned her in town square. You gotta give our sicko government credit; they’re not squeamish. I guess watching the plague monsters rip into people on the street gave us all a taste for blood.

I have trouble coping with Craig’s death.

Christophe was a mercenary. Him dying didn’t come as a surprise. But Craig? Hell. I ain’t seen him in years.

We were friendly back in high school, before he started dating Clyde Donovan and fell into his own little world. We’d sneak cigarettes behind the school during our lunch break. Sometimes we’d talk about what we wanted to do with our future.

Craig wanted to be a veterinarian.

Never once during those conversations did he say, “Hey, I’d like to have my throat slit and be hung by my big toes outside a government building so I could be an example, dude.”

Poor Craig. It’s no big loss, now. He never would have made it as a vet in this regime. All the dogs in the neighborhood are being cooked up and served as delicacies.

There’s a reason I never eat out.

I’m going to miss him, I guess. As much as you can miss someone you haven’t seen in a few years.

Death doesn’t hit as hard as it used to. There are worse things.

Turning people into brain-eating bogeymen because you’re using tainted condoms, for one.

Or here, here’s something worse. Knowing what the attack means. Knowing it’s not the last.

No one in town knew Christophe DeLorne, and that worked to the so-called-terrorists’ advantage.

Everyone knew Clyde and Craig. Everyone knew Wendy.

Everyone knew they spent a lot of time at the Broflovski home.

What came with news of this attack was knowledge, like a punch in the gut.

I have to wonder if I’m ever going to see Kyle again.

Not just because of his secret, or the fact that They are going to be on his tail as soon as they figure out he associated with the dead. No, there was another indicator I just didn’t want to admit until this second.

I’ve only had sex like last night once in my life; angry, frustrated, passionate, and hopeless. Fucking a man who knew he was going to die.

It was with Christophe, the night before he became a suicide bomber. _  
_


	12. When Stars Go Out Each Night

_-Stan-_

* * *

Minutes before the second bomber hits, I’m walking on Main Street.

I’m supposed to be putting up flyers offering a reward for anyone who can come forth with information on the terrorists. It doesn’t seem fair; it’s just Their way of drawing out anyone else who might be involved. They figure if someone had information and they didn’t surrender it yet, they’re damn well expatriates.

They relish the role of executioners, even when They already know who’s behind it all.

Courtesy of me.

The old me, the one that thought the future was going to be awesome and was more concerned about his parents’ stupidity than security; he would stop. He would ask, what am I doing? Turning in the guy who’s been my best friend since birth? Snitching on my ex? Is it right?

He would stress over it for maybe a day, since he had the same trouble coping with betrayal that I do, which has to count for something, and then he’d take action. Sure, maybe his actions wouldn’t be as dramatic or make as big a statement as Kyle’s, but he would stand up and give a speech. It would start like this:

I learned something today…

Everyone would band together, and maybe they’d agree with him, or maybe they’d shoot him on the spot, but either way, the old me would have done something.

Yeah, I miss that idealistic kid. I miss being me.

They haven’t found Kyle yet; but They didn’t seem too worried last I checked. Some of Them don’t think he’ll have the balls to hit twice, and some of them are just plain lazy.

The explosion changes that. I hear it, even though I’m blocks away from City Hall. My first instinct is to run towards it, to see what happened. To see if we have a repeat of my sister’s death.

To quell the feeling in my stomach, the one that wants to know who did it this time, and if maybe they actually succeeded at killing Them.

Of course, they didn’t. I get a call about a minute after, and the voice on the other line is gravelly, but triumphant, “We caught one of them. There’s a definite link to Broflovski.”

Click. They hang up.

I go back to hanging flyers, because I haven’t been instructed to do anything else. I practice the Law, and I know how to be obedient. I know how to be a useful tool.

Not Tool with a capital T, although maybe I’m that too.

I don’t know what to think right now.

Slap, rip, stick.

Slap, rip, stick.

Slap, rip, stick.

I slap the flyer against a wall, rip the tape off, and stick it up. People will tear them down by tomorrow, not because they want to protect Kyle, but because people are destructive. We like making things, just to tear them down again.

Hell, I’m tempted to shred every flyer in my hand, right now.

Right now. Shit.

Right now, right this very second, They’re going to be tracking down Kyle. They’re going to find him, and watch him, and figure out his next move, and then they’ll stop him. They’ll make an example of him, just like they did to Cartman.

Man, I miss that fat asshole. I miss a lot of things lately.

Nostalgia’s a fucking killer.

My eyes fall on a boarded up window.

Kenny McCormick’s private brothel.

It’s a miracle, but the old me speaks up. He’s begging me, pleading with me to find Kyle first; not to let Them hurt him. He’s fucking _screaming_.

I don’t know why I decide to check if Kenny knows where Kyle’s been. It’s a long shot; as far as I know, Kenny hasn’t had any contact with any of us for years.

When I knock on his door, he’s half dressed in sweatpants and his hair is disheveled. The fake grin on his lips falls as soon as he realizes it’s me.

“Marsh,” he mutters, stepping back. I can see his filth, his bed, littered with condom wrappers and stains that I never want to identify.

I used to play on the swings with this guy. I used to share my lunch with him, and steal his answers for exams, and joke with him about girls.

Before we both realized we like guys. One guy. The only guy who matters.

“Hi, Kenny,” I greet him, stiff and professional, “Can I come in?”

“Free country,” he replies, and then he adds, “Oh, wait, it’s not.”

I could kill him for it, like that girl. That girl whose face I saw in my dreams last night, but she didn’t look like a girl.

She looked like a boy with emerald eyes.

“So…” I say instead, because my gun’s melted to the concrete, or something; I didn’t think to dig through the rubble of my office and check.

“I don’t suppose you’re jonesing to be a new client.”

“No,” I answer without thinking, “I know how most of your clients end up.”

His glance is quick and sharp, and he knows what I mean. Even though we’re not friends; we haven’t been friends, even since before this ordeal, the betrayal and hurt still seeps from his being.

He’s pissed that I’ve knowingly let him destroy people. But didn’t I already say it? Humans only know how to wreck and pillage and rape; he would have ended up destroying people either way. Just metaphorically instead of physically.

Like that’s much better.

“Then, what? They send you in for a checkup? Prostate exam? Annie’s the one that usually swings by,” he tells me, his tone light. He makes little air quotes around the phrase ‘prostate exam’.

It’s my turn to be surprised. Annie Bartlett, the Governor who always has those damned sparkles on her cheeks, visits the town whore? One would think she had better taste than that. Then again, judging from the reddish stains on Kenny’s bed, he deals in blood, and she is a vampire.

“I’m looking for Kyle.”

“Kyle?” Kenny blinks, “Haven’t seen him in years either. You two having a lover’s spat?”

Fuck. He’s playing with me. He’s not this stupid.

“We broke up.”

Those ice blue eyes go wide with innocence and feigned sympathy, “Oh. Sorry, dude.”

“It’s a long time past,” I wave it away, “Kyle is a suspect in an investigation.”

“What kind of investigation?”

“The suicide bombings at City Hall and the Legal Enforcement building have been traced back to him.”

“No shit?” Kenny murmurs, “Kyle’s been up to mischief, hunh?”

“He killed my sister.”

This time the sympathy, the pity, is kind of real, “Oh.”

“Yeah. Well, she was a bitch.”

“She kind of was,” Kenny agrees, but I can tell he doesn’t buy my words for a second.

I hate being read so easily. I’m supposed to be unreadable. Perfect. Untouchable.

My phone rings again. I recognize the brisk tone; it’s Lynn Kitty Gelsa. “Marsh? We’re organizing a sweep of all the public buildings. We think Broflovski’s going to strike again tonight. According to his neighbors, the only people he ever spoke to were DeLorne, Craig Tucker, Clyde Donovan, and Wendy Testaburger. All of who are deceased.”

My breath hitches, “What?”

“Tucker and Donovan staged the attack on City Hall, and Testaburger was implicated, so we settled the matter,” Lynn Kitty continues, ignorant of what she’s just done to my mental frame. “The only other contact we have with Broflovski is his brother, who seems to have gone missing, along with the suspect himself.”

“O-okay, so what can I do?”

“Do you have any notions on where he might strike next?”

“How do you know he’ll do it again if he has no more…” I search for a word, “Followers?”

“These attacks were strategic. Their aim is to make people take notice. So far we’ve done a fine job of suppressing public interest in the bombing in your building, but City Hall has drawn considerable attention. Now that Broflovski has the public eye, he’s going to want to present a grand denouement. He must know we’re on to him. Our experts guess the attack’s going to come tonight.”

“Oh.”

“Right now we’re focusing on any building favored by the New City Governors. The most likely suspect is the courthouse; it houses all our legal documents, and is in close enough proximity to the jail that he might be able to knock down a wall; free a few political prisoners. We could, of course, be mistaken. If you can think of any places Broflovski might view as significant sacrifices, call in immediately,” Lynn Kitty orders. Then she hangs up.

Political prisoners. That’s a laugh. Anyone viewed as a threat isn’t jailed. They’re killed. That prison’s been empty forever now.

I look up at Kenny, “Wendy, Craig, and Clyde were killed.”

“I know,” Kenny looks away, “A client told me.”

“Word travels fast,” I hate myself for not knowing before he did.

“Did you hear they hung Craig upside down outside the surviving wing?”

I clench my eyes shut. He didn’t just say that. It’s impossible.

“That must be a rumor.”

“Client saw it.”

“Your clients aren’t the most reliable sources.”

“It was Token Black.”

“Oh.”

Token’s one of the richest guys in the county. He also used to be one of Craig’s best friends. He wouldn’t lie about that kind of thing. Which makes it true.

The voice in my head beseeches me; I can’t let Them find Kyle.

“I didn’t think Kyle would come here,” I murmur, “Let me know if you see him, anyway.”

Kenny smiles humorlessly, “I won’t.”

“But if you do.”

“I won’t.”

I turn to leave, and that’s when I see it. Right there on the counter of the kitchenette. A silver necklace. So familiar that I can see it even when I close my eyes.

It’s a Star of David.

Something hits me in the gut, a feeling so raw and primal and strong that I’m surprised Kenny can’t feel it emanating across the room.

I think; this is what it’s like to watch your lover love someone else.

I should be devastated, by all rights. I should be raging against everything. Instead I’m back on my default, the same one I’ve had since Kyle first left me to fend for myself against the beasts and the monsters and the world. Numbness. I feel nothing; just that one sharp, primitive pang and then nothing. I’m empty inside.

No more little voice of the old Stan Marsh.

Of course, it’s Kyle’s fault. Nothing’s scarier than facing the world alone. It’s bound to leave you null and void where it matters.

I wanted to save him, even for a brief time, and he chose Kenny instead. His last night on earth, by the sounds of it, and he chose someone who isn’t me. I’ve been…replaced.

If I was a good person, it wouldn’t matter. I’d forgive and forget. I’d make my gay little speech.

I’m not a good person. I’m an unconscionable bastard. The old Stan’s dead, and he knows exactly who he’s going to take to the grave with him.

It’s an epiphany, really.

Kenny sees where my eyes have fallen. He takes a step away from me, but I’m faster. I have his arm twisted up and behind his back before he can make a sound.

“We’re going on a little trip.

Then I twist harder, and the sound he makes is like nothing I’ve ever heard before.

And it’s really fucking satisfying.


	13. I Make It Out Alright Tomorrow, Don’t Worry

_-Kyle-_

* * *

Stories end.

Sometimes they’re happy, and sometimes they’re morbidly depressing; but they end. It’s inevitable. And sometimes when they end, you don’t even know the whole story. You can’t, because there’s no way to discern what the character’s thinking, or what lead up to the pivotal moment. What started it all.

That’s how it is right now. If I fail, which all odds are that I will, no one’s going to go, oh, that Kyle Broflovski had a story.

They’re going to see it this way; I was born, I was a good student, and then after my parents unfortunate demise I became a fanatic.

Yeah. There’s no bigger picture to see there.

But I want to set things straight. I didn’t start out thinking the New City Governors were all bad. I mean sure, they were the shitty little vampire kids who plagued my elementary school back when that one bitch wrote a book about vampires that exploded into popularity. That’s no reason to hate them.

I’m sure they didn’t hate me for reading classical literature and getting better math grades than they could dream of.

I was kind of optimistic, actually. It’s exciting to see a new government rise. There are so many possibilities. So many openings for real progress; not just of the people, but of society, the world!

But. Right from the get-go, some of their policies…irked me.

Okay, I mean, policing the school system to watch for signs of the plague was a little suspicious, but acceptable. And hell, when they started carting away the victims that survived, that was even satisfactory. Saved me from having to worry about monsters attacking Ike in the street, at least.

Then that thing happened to Kenny.

I wasn’t as close to Ken as I used to be, so maybe I ignored it.

Then Cartman died, and he was a douchebag, so…well, whatever. Some of his political opposition rants might have made sense, but him dying wasn’t exactly a great loss for humanity.

It was irritating, though.

Stan and I ignored it, and kept living our lovey-dovey grotesque parody of a life, playing baseball with Ike because Stark’s Pond got filled in for building, and there was nowhere else he could play hockey, what with the wall.

Then Shelley got the job with Enforcement, and rumors started drifting back to us. People disappearing off the street. People being used in experiments. Forced incarceration for nothing more than saying a bad word against public policy. Shelley denied it all, and that’s when I started getting suspicious.

The laws got harsher, every day. You couldn’t wear this color, or eat that food. Garlic was outlawed. Garlic, for Chris’sake.

First off, we shouldn’t have been real picky about what we ate when the real government, the one outside our walls only gave us a limited supply. Second off, that was kind of a clue in that the ex-vampire kids still…well, thought they were vampires. They weren’t sane.

When Craig’s dad disappeared, he came to me.

Mr. Tucker had started some lobbyist organization that only lasted a few weeks. Mostly because of their leader’s status as MIA. Craig thought it was a conspiracy. He’d heard the same rumors, and hadn’t believed them either, right up until it happened to him.

I was making him tea. Clyde was there, because he and Craig were beginning their tentative foray into a relationship. Stan was making pasta. Ike was playing a video game. And I called Wendy over, because her parents had been infected, mysteriously, and theory was that it happened the same way it had with Cartman’s mom.

They hadn’t quite progressed to the brain eating zombie bit like she had; they just died. It was lucky for Wendy, if you looked at it all nice and skewed.

Which was pretty much how you had to look at everything in those days.

The whole group was there, except Christophe. It was our first meeting, but none of us knew it.

At first, that night, it was about support.

Then it evolved.

We did our research. We found out about the torture, the coercion. The fear. The new laws kept coming. They were all little things, things that didn’t really catch the public’s attention. No one really cared if they couldn’t wear red ribbons. No one really noticed that the news on TV was quickly becoming manufactured.

People are idiots. We were idiots. We didn’t see what was happening. Then Ike came home and told me street hockey was outlawed. Such a little thing. Street hockey; they took away his pond, and now they were taking away his pavement. My little brother.

He could still play basketball, or soccer, or a myriad of other sports.

He didn’t even really care.

But I did. I sent Stan in, under cover, because he was the one person I trusted with my life. I remade a connection with Christophe. Together with them all, we theorized what it was like outside our wall. We wondered what it would be like if we could tear it down.

When I realized that Stan was getting too deep, I cut him off. He didn’t take it well. I’d never seen so much pain in a person’s eyes.

I’d never felt so much myself.

It wasn’t just him; the plans we were making turned darker by the second. It would have killed me if he got hurt. So much was happening, and _no one_ could see it. It was like all of Park County had turned a blind eye, because they were okay as long as their lives stayed untouched. As long as they stayed happy and safe, that was all that mattered. They could give up their rights, just for that.

I couldn’t. I had given up so much at that point that I couldn’t bear to lose a single thing more. Even something stupid, like…oh, I don’t know. My ability to eat pasta.

Anyway. That’s my story. That’s how it went down. I guess it’s not the big odyssey I made it out to be. I guess it’s nothing more than a kid, trying to make sense of the world.

Now I know. Now I’ve learned. Things have to be balanced. You can’t be a superhero without being a supervillain at the same time. You have to take responsibility for the things you do, and you have to follow things out ‘til the end. Even if you’re not totally sure you believe in them anymore.

Beneath me, between the railing that composes the scaffolding set up a top the warehouse, there are monsters.

Not the monsters I’ve been fighting against; these are real ones with glowing eyes and rotting flesh. If they still had real brainwaves, maybe they’d be in pain. Maybe all those neurons and synapses of theirs would tell them; hey, we’re decomposing as we stand. But they haven’t got anything inside those heads of theirs other than hunger, deep and insatiable. They’d devour the whole world if they could, and then maybe each other. They’d still be left wanting more.

Sometimes I wonder who brought the plague to our town. So many things happened in South Park before we surrounded ourselves by the wall, the second great wall our town’s ever seen. This wasn’t even really the first zombie outbreak we’d seen; but this time I can’t solve my problem by killing Kenny.

There’s only one way to fix things, and hell, maybe I’m just going to make everything worse.

But this is the plan. The same plan I’ve had since those days in the kitchen with Stan, Wendy, Craig, and Clyde. The same plan I’ve had since before I sent everyone who believe in what I believe to their death.

Got to stick to the plan.

Otherwise I’m just a hypocrite.

Doubt nags at my mind, worries at my heart. I ignore it, because I’ve gotten so good at not seeing.

I’m just as good as all the blind idiots in this town, because I’ve let myself get so caught up in the big picture that I’ve forgotten the details. Like Ike. Moses, who’s going to take care of my little brother after I’m gone?

Not physically; he’s old enough to take care of himself. But emotionally, god, he’s just going to turn into another bah-bah-bahing sheep in the herd.

Unless he sees that I’m doing this for him.

Or am I? Shit, it’s hard to see where to draw the line. Am I doing this for Ike, or am I doing it for Stan, or Wendy, or Kenny, or Clyde, or Craig? Or am I doing it for me? And if I’m doing it for me, which me? The me now, the one that’s just a shell of a man, or the me before; the one that knew how to smile and love and laugh?

My fingers are trembling as they brush over the plastic wire near my hip. I’m strapped up; well equipped. Somebody make a joke about how well hung I am.

I’ve got enough fire power to bring down this whole factory, and all the mindless parasites filling it with their stench.

Kenny’s house used to be here once. This place is in the ghetto, or what used to be the ghetto before it was snatched up by eminent domain.

This was always the plan. First you strike out at the law. Then you strike out at the leaders. Then you prove your point by going to the media. Except we haven’t got any media, other than the outside world. The factory leans right up against the wall. If it goes kaboom, then hey. Park County might see the sky again.

People might die. People who were never involved in this mess, who never wanted anything more than to quarantine us from spreading the plague.

It’s not the best plan. I’m living on a wing and a prayer that the plague won’t spread like wildfire, or that maybe outside they’ve finally developed a cure.

I could be wrong, and kill the world.

I could be wrong; the world could already be dead. The plague could have spread outside these walls already, and I’ll be bringing the rest of Park County into some hellish zombie land.

I could just be wasting time speculating. I’ve decided to do this, and I’m going to do it.

Except the click I hear isn’t from my thumb pressing down on a trigger.

I turn, the scaffolding swaying with the movement. There, at the end of it, standing near the offices that make up the top of the warehouse, and the only entrance, is Stan.

And he’s got a gun.


	14. To Make You So Goddamn Defiant

_-Kenny-_

* * *

 

Some clients, they have kinks. They like fucking you with a gun down your throat; seeing that despite the threat, you can still get hard as hell.

They like fucking you with a gun and having their dick in your throat too.

Kinks. Go figure.

Then again, my clients don’t use loaded guns. I check. Every time.

When Stan first twisted my arm, I struggled, man. Having a broken limb always wins out against going on ‘little trips’ with a psychopath. Then he pulled the gun from another dimension, or you know, his pants- which seems like a good way to end up with a hole in your ass if you ask me.

No one ever does though; ask me, I mean.

Basically, in the end, I had no choice but to join his kamikaze mission. If there’d been a way to escape, I would have.

The factory isn’t exactly my favorite place in the world. I imagine no one would want to see the machination of zombie quarantine sitting smack dab where their front yard used to be. Plus, you know, my dad was massacred here, in front of my eyes. Scotch drinking bastard he might have been, but I never held it against him. He had honor, somewhere in his drunken stupors, and I respected that.

Much good my respect did him. All I saw was blood when Stan dragged me up the ladder on the side of the building, cold metal pressed into my spine.

It’s probably the first time in a long time that I’ve been honestly close to death.

Then he turns the gun on Kyle, choking my breath from my lungs. Kyle can’t see it, but Stan’s hand is shaking.

It was vibrating like a fucking tuning fork when he had it trained on me, and now that it’s pointed straight at his ex-lover’s head, Stan still doesn’t seem to be winning any awards for steadiness.

You’d think Kyle would notice, but he doesn’t.

He’s only got one focus. It doesn’t even matter that I’m being held hostage. I’m just a side character in this movie. A prop. Stan’s holding me tight, but Kyle’s not even looking at me.

His eyes are glued to Stan’s face.

No big surprise. Kyle’s eyes are on Stan. Yeah? So? They’re always fucking on him.

I want to scream, “Hello, the guy’s having a psychotic break! He wants to kill you and make you into zombie food!”

I can just imagine the blank stares I’d get for doing that. Stan would jostle his grip so his arm was even tighter around my throat and Kyle would blink and maybe spare a glance my way, and then they’d continue this sick, twisted face off of theirs…and I’m hysterical.

Like, in the not funny sense. I’m cracking up, going mad. Because now, despite the gravity of the situation, all I want to do is laugh. I can feel it, bubbling up in my chest, trying to break free from my lips.

Shit, now I’m shaking too, moving in time with Stan’s tremors for an entirely different reason.

“You need to leave,” Kyle says in a steady voice, barely acknowledging that the barrier between life and death is suddenly a lot clearer.

When I was a kid, I could die and come back to life. It was a talent, a gift, a curse. I also haven’t tested it out in a few years, and I’m not eager to try now. Dying is never pleasant. It’s dark, and its cold, and it’s terrifying every single time, because there’s always that what if- what if I’ll never see daylight again?

What if Stan and Kyle die right along with me?

This is so much worse than Annie Bartlett slipping into my hovel, making me do things she must’ve imagined out of horror films for how sickening they are, the sparkles on her face catching in the moonlight like the edge of a knife.

This is worse than when Cartman died, when the closest thing I had to a best friend ended up six feet underground, or maybe even in a shallower grave than that. For all I know he could have been eaten by the brain-loving plague victims; no one let me go to the funeral.

And still, this is worse because- because it’s Kyle.

I’ve wanted him since I first learned what wanting was, since the first time back in grade school when he gave me half of his PBJ sandwich because my family couldn’t afford to let me bring my own. I knew right then that I wanted him to be mine, although my thoughts were focused on friendship at that point.

When I figured out I wanted, needed more, it was petrifying. I was grotesque. I was even more of a freak, for wanting him.

But it was okay, because it was Kyle.

Then I realized what was going on with him and Stan, and nothing was ever okay again.

Right up until now.

Funny, the future still looks pretty grim.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Stan’s voice is raw and determined; nothing belying his trembling grasp on the gun.

“You can’t stay here. That’s just silly,” Kyle replies conversationally, like they’re discussing whether sausage or bacon is a more appetizing breakfast meat.

Sorry, I talks about food when I get nervous. Byproduct of never having enough.

Stan’s grip around my neck hardens a bit, and I gasp. Kyle’s pissing him off, which doesn’t really seem like a smart thing to do.

The Kyle Broflovski I know is like, three IQ points short of a genius, so I’m hoping that this is all part of some strategy he’s got. I’m trusting him.

Even though it’s fucking hard.

“Kyle, I called for backup. The Governors are going to be here any minute, and then whatever you’re planning- well-“ Stan makes a noise that kind of sounds like ‘kaboom’, and okay, maybe he’s not too bright either, because antagonizing a Broflovski never gets anyone anywhere good.

“That was stupid,” Kyle remarks, like he’s reading my mind.

“Why?”

“Because you’re just making it easier for me,” he says, and I want to pretend I don’t know what he means. I want to pretend I don’t see the homemade explosives sitting in front of him like a kickball or the igniter in his hand, attached to his belt buckle as a precaution, so that no one can take him down without causing this whole place to go up in flames.

Stan has to have seen it too.

              I’ve known; I’ve always known Kyle was behind the attacks on the county. Just- seeing it now makes it real. It makes it hard to pretend that the guy in front of me is the same guy who split his sandwich with me, the same guy who would watch porn with me in high school and comment on the artistic merit of wide angle shots.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Stan tells him, and yeah, that jock head of his must be dense.

Kyle snaps, “They’re abominations, Stan! They’re fucking evil. You called them here like cattle to the slaughter? Good! They can die too.”

Die? Oh god. What’s that prayer, the one I should know by heart? Our father, who art in heaven…

“Don’t be ridiculous. The Governors have done what no one else could with this place, what you couldn’t!” Stan glances down, at the horror show beneath us, the people with broken, exposed ribs and torn limbs and rotting flesh, dragging their feet with a clunkclunkclunk, drooling and cannibalizing each other, “They made us safe.”

“At what cost?”

“Freedom isn’t free, Kyle. It never has been,” Stan shakes his head, “ _You_ taught me that. We needed to feel safe, so we gave up-“

“What, free will? Is that what you were going to say?”

…hallowed be thy name…

“No, of course not,” Stan’s tone cracks, just for a second, and I close my eyes tight against sheer force of the desperation that shines through in that moment.

“I don’t know what happened to you,” Kyle says in this deplorable voice, this voice that’s edging in on insanity, “You used to care.”

“I still care, Kyle! Goddamnit, I care about making sure you don’t implode everything we’ve got left,” he growls.

“I’ve got nothing left,” Kyle hisses, like an oath, like a curse.

“Fuck you!” Stan’s yelling now, like the power in his voice will somehow dissuade Kyle from making mincemeat of us, “You’ve got Ike, don’t you? You’ve got Kenny-“

He shakes me hard, and I’m pretty sure my lips are going blue.

…thy kingdom come…

“-you’ve got me,” his voice is weaker on this one, almost a promise.

“That-“ Kyle’s voice pitches up an octave, “That’s not what I mean, and you know it, Stan.”

“What? Having a family isn’t what you mean by ‘everything’? Having people who love you and support you, no matter what?”

Stan punctuates the words with a dark, bitter laugh; one that says he knows what Kyle’s answer will be.

“It’s not enough. Love isn’t fucking enough, not without the security to know it all won’t be ripped away in the middle of the night. Infected-“ Kyle’s eyes flicker to me for a moment, and I feel shame burn up my neck. He knows. About me being a carrier.

He fucking knows.

And he still slept with me.

…thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven…

“-used as lab rats in the vampire kids’ plots? I’m sorry, Stan. I can’t live with that,” Kyle’s resolved. He’s staring at something behind us, something neither of us can see.

I almost think Stan’s going to say something cheesy, like ‘well, you can die with that’. I feel him tense up, see the gun steady, ready to fire straight ahead. But there aren’t any words. Stan’s dead quiet.

Maybe that’s because of the footsteps. Stan whirls around, and there’s Annie, and Ryan, and Lynn Kitty. Not the whole city board, but half of it. They’re giving Stan looks of approval, like they didn’t think he had the balls to do what he has.

Annie starts clapping, slow and rhythmic. She draws the attentions of the monsters down below, but they have no way of getting up here. The only way in is through the hatch to the outside ladder, and though the scaffolding is unsteady, it’ll hold up.

“I’m proud of you, Stanley,” Lynn Kitty purrs in her politician voice, the one she uses when she’s trying to wrangle public approval, “This- this is excellent work.”

Kyle’s got his arms crossed. He’s not concerned that he’ll get shot, even though Ryan’s leveling a gun at him to replace Stan’s. He’s not afraid of dying.

I wish I could tell him how utterly stupid that is. I wish I’d had the strength to tell him when we lay tangled together in my stained sheets, another world away from this one.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Stan replies in this brainwashed voice that I don’t buy for a second. I’ll be the first to admit he’s got major issues, but blind obedience isn’t one of them.

“I’m going to need you to secure Mr. Broflovski, and then we’ll be on our way,” Lynn Kitty glances down at her high heeled shoes piercing the grated surface of the scaffolding. They can’t be very comfortable. She’s looking past them, at the creatures trudging under our feet, her lips expressing distaste.

“I don’t like it here,” Ryan snaps, “So make it quick.”

Stan turns back towards Kyle, who snorts, “Fat chance.”

His fingers are twitching towards the trigger for the explosives, but he doesn’t seem to be in a rush. Ever the scientific observer; that’s Kyle.

Maybe he noticed how Stan held himself. Maybe he just knows Stan better than Stan even knows himself.

Because when Stan shoots Ryan, and then Lynn Kitty, point blank in the forehead, Kyle doesn’t even have the decency to look surprised. Annie, who’s the only one of the trio that’s unarmed, stares at him, unreadable. She shakes her head, like maybe it’s a shame that she never got to tame Stan, because that’s what she likes to do. Tame things.

Like me.

I don’t know what happens next. The fear, the frustration, the anger must have built up in me so high that I’m beyond thinking. Somehow, I end up with the gun. Stan’s startled, not expecting the sudden fight, not expecting me to tear it from his grasp and turn it on her. I’m furious, I’m seething, I’m thinking give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses.

…please, God, please forgive us all, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

See, I was a good Christian once. I went to church and everything.

I hope that counts for something, because I shoot Annie Bartlett in the heart, or the hole where one’s supposed to be. All I can see is fluorescent warehouse lighting, floaters in my vision and white, white light.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Someone’s screaming.

I want to spit on her, as she grasps her chest and falls over the railing, landing in a heap on the hard concrete way down below, but I can’t even see what’s left of her body. It’s being devoured.

Stan wrestles the gun from my now limp grip, and that high, keening wail I hear stops. Because it was coming from me.

Of course. I’m such a cliché.

Maybe death won’t be so bad. Hell, maybe I can embrace it.

Stan turns the gun on Kyle again, and I try to regain my footing, to hit him and make him lose his balance so he won’t, can’t pull the trigger. I forgot the situation. I forgot what was important. I was too concerned about the imminent demise of my soul to take control of things, to save Kyle.

“Stop it you idiot! I’m doing this for you, too! Or do you really have a death wish?” Stan demands of me.

That stops me, just for a second. Not because I don’t have a death wish, but because, for that second, I’m in shock. Did he just read my thoughts?

A second is all he needs. He pulls the trigger.

Nothing happens. He shakes the thing, checks the chambers. Then, “No more bullets.”

Kyle’s laugh is sharp and biting.

“Well, that’s disappointing for you.”

To my shock, Stan shrugs, his entire body relaxing against my back, “Y’know, I’m not too broke up about it.”

That gets Kyle’s attention.

“Why not?”

“I don’t think I could live with it; killing you.”

Kyle’s response is less scathing, more confused, “But- I don’t get- what are you talking about?”

“Coming here, doing this-“ Stan shakes his head like he’s figuring something out, “I was losing. Jealous of you going to Kenny, angry that you cut me out of your life, sick of being a pawn.”

“What changed?”

Stan kicks Ryan’s body, looks like he’s considering pushing it to the zombies, “I remembered.”

“Remembered what, Stan? I don’t have time for mind games.”

Stan laughs, and it’s less bitter this time, more self-berating, “You’re right. You always have been. And maybe I don’t want you to die, but you’re not going to fucking listen to me either way, right?”

Kyle shrugs. Confirming Stan’s guess.

“This is my closure. Proving to myself that I’m capable of killing you. Proving to myself that I could, but that it would be pointless when you’re so set on doing it yourself.”

“I’m not killing myself-“ Kyle objects.

“-oh, I know,” Stan grins, and it’s full of snark, “You’re saving us. You’re a _martyr_.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Kyle murmurs, and a real smile’s twisting his lips. One I haven’t seen in years, since before all of this.

“Why Kenny?” Stan asks, like I’m not standing right next to him.

Kyle’s green eyes fall on me for like the third time this whole night. There’s pity in them, and maybe love too, but it’s lost on me.

“Would you have taken me back like this?”

Stan blinks, “No. Probably not. I probably would have shot you.”

“There’s your answer.”

Ah. I’m a replacement. I always knew as much.

“You were the best super best friend a guy could ask for,” and I don’t really get what Stan’s saying. It sounds too much like goodbye.

“Back at you,” Kyle’s eyelids crinkle at the corners, like he’s suppressing a laugh, even as his fingers run over the igniter, “Can you take care of Ike for me?”

“You don’t even have to ask,” Stan says. And then he starts…

…walking away? He has hold of my elbow, pulling me along.

“What are you doing?” I demand, tugging hard at his wrist, like maybe it’s the only way to reconnect him with sanity, “We can’t just leave him! Let me go!”

“Kenny, I swear to god,” Stan barks, his irises so dark they’re nearly black. He pulls me up the ladder rung at the end of the scaffolding with all the strength that used to make him a star athlete.

The last thing I can see is Kyle’s expression, his green eyes clearer than they’ve ever been. It’s terrifying. At that moment, I turn my head away, and I can’t look back.

Stan does though. After he shoves me onto the rooftop ladder, yelling at me to get the fuck away, he disappears. He stays up there until the last possible second, until I’m worried he’s going to be shredded into smithereens- and why do I even care about that bastard anyway-his mouth moving. I can see it from the ground; the tilt of his face, the infinitesimal movements of his lips. But he’s not yelling. He’s telling Kyle something, something I’ll never hear because the gods of the winds are capricious and true, and whether it’s a love confession or something along the lines of this ‘couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy’, it’s gone forever.

Seconds later, so is Kyle.

Stan lands on his feet beside me, like some kind of lithe jungle cat. He starts yanking me along, and I think maybe he says ‘move’ or ‘duck’ or something with one syllable that escapes my hearing. We’re running alongside the wall, the blemish on Park County’s land as the warehouse behind us gets ripped apart from the inside out.

I don’t even have time to think ‘amen’ before I’m thrown forward, into the Earth.

Into death.


	15. It’s The Magic Of America

_-Stan-_

* * *

“Kenny! Kenny, wake the fuck up, dude,” my voice cracks in a way it hasn’t since I was fourteen and had nothing but pretty girls and a certain, amazing guy on my mind.

God, I don’t even like Kenny, but the sight of him sprawled across the dirt like a broken doll is more than I can take right now.

Maybe it’s because I know my own strings are cut. I can’t pretend to be a marionette anymore.

I already know how this is going to play out. The remaining Governors will be scattered, vulnerable. Easy to pick off. Kyle and his cell may have been the sole extremists in Park County that were visible, but no way were they the only ones.

Dissatisfaction with the New City Governors’ policies is rampant; complaints filled up my inbox in the enforcement office. Back when I still had an inbox.

They were anonymous, of course. Being anything but anonymous was a quick way to an early grave.

Maybe that can change now. Now that the regime’s sure to fall.

Thanks to Kyle. Kyle, the person I…

Better not to think about it. Better not to reminisce, because then all I’ll remember is the first time we made love, and how he’s in pieces at this very moment. It’s like the ultimate rejection; having your lover die rather than stay alive, with you.

And the worst thing is, even if my prediction is right, even if random vigilantes decide to take down what’s left of our dictatorship…nothing will change. A new set of kings and queens and villains will take the stupid vampire kids’ place.

There’s nothing left to hate and nothing left to save, other than myself. And I’m not even worth it.

Despair is a funny thing. The complete absence of hope; it kind of indicates that hope’s not even a glimmer in the future. But I experience total, utter desolation for a moment; just one.

Then hope comes right back in and knocks me up the side of the head.

“Stan?”

I glance up towards the voice. Ike. I promised I’d take care of him.

“What happened?” he’s biting his lip and looking so damned young. Even though he’s not related to Kyle by blood, blood that’s mixed with dirt and grime and probably dots my skin somewhere amongst all the zombie gristle, they look alike.

Only a Broflovski could make the expression Ike’s giving me right now, full of perfect clarity and love, and sadness too.

Kyle always worried that Ike was going to the dark side, but I never did. He dressed all in black and went to the youth rallies at city hall, but I’ve always known he’s too damned smart to buy into that.

Hell, smarter than me.

He was just doing his teen rebellion thing; only there was no mom or dad to pay attention. Big brother was too busy being a revolutionary.

Now big brother’s pink spray. I’m probably breathing bits of him in right now, as the air begins to settle around me. I must be a sick fuck, because that just makes me want to breathe deeper.

“Hey,” I say, and my voice sounds so tired.

“Is Kenny okay?” Ike asks, keeping his eyes decidedly away from the smoldering remains of the factory. I do the same. I can’t bear to look quite yet.

“I don’t know,” I reply, honest as can be.

As if he hears me, somehow, Kenny’s body shudders and shakes, wracked with coughs. He tries to sit up, his cerulean eyes blinking up at me.

He whispers Kyle’s name.

I wince, shake my head. His face falls. Ike doesn’t see.

I tell him, “I think you were dead for a little while there, dude.”

Kenny frowns, shrugs; a jerky movement, “It happens.”

“My brother was in there, wasn’t he?” Ike points to the factory. I finally look at it, for real. I take in Kyle’s masterpiece. I glimpse my second snatch of hope.

It’s amazing. It’s beautiful. It’s terrifying.

I can see the sky.

“Yes.”

For the first time in years, the wall gapes open, a scar in the landscape I’ve come to know as South Park, as home. I know this is what Kyle wanted; a direct line to the outside world.

“He did that?”

“He did.”

I’m scared to get up, to walk over and peer out.

I do it anyway. There’s nothing but sky and pastures, sun and grass. Of course. The next town over is miles away. It will be a walk to find out if there’s a whole world waiting to greet us or if our quarantine served no purpose but our own. The infection could have spread. It could have.

The entire globe might be populated by crazed cannibals. By blowing up the wall, Kyle might have doomed us all.

Kenny and Ike come to stand beside me. We’re teetering at the edge of a precipice.

I guess the future’s like this for everyone.

Kyle, what have you done?

Why couldn’t you have let things be?

Even now that he’s gone, I still think that way. I still wonder, what if?

I want to go back to being Stan and Kyle, not two monsters with different faces. We didn’t deserve this. We didn’t deserve any of this. We should have been together, forever.

Now he’s part of a worm buffet, and I’m probably going to get executed for treason, or eaten by a horde of hungry zombies from the outside, or…stand here deliberating like some kind of helpless child.

“What do we do?” Ike queries, staring at the sun the way people always say not to, or you’ll go blind.

I glance at Kenny, strangely comfortable with the knowledge that he probably wishes I were dead instead of Kyle. I kind of agree with him.

He nods, firm, resolute. A bird breaking free of a cage, stretching its wings for the first time in ages.

I tear my eyes from his, thinking maybe, just maybe, he’s braver than I ever gave him credit for.

“We go out there. See if anyone’s still alive. If everyone’s still alive,” I say, sounding stronger than I thought I could. My ears are ringing, and my eyes are squinting from all the residue still lingering in the air, but somehow, I feel okay.

I feel like maybe I can survive this.

Ike murmurs, “What about South Park?”

“Is there anything here left for you?”

“No…but…the house. What if they patch up the wall while we’re gone. What if we’re locked out of this place, forever?”

I hadn’t thought of that.

“Would that be so horrible?”

Ike mulls it over. Kenny and I are already decided.

Slowly, the younger boy nods.

We climb out into the day.

The world is terrifying. Beautiful. Awe-inspiring. It’s everything.

And Kyle’s the one who gave it back to us.


End file.
